Madame Bovary's Haberdashery Read online

  She shuddered, hid her face with her hands.

  ‘It really put me off sex. After that, whenever I was in the throes, so to speak, I saw the white-tails out of the corner of my eye. He couldn’t stand it, so we split up. I thought I would be over it by now, but it’s happening again isn’t it? I see them out of the corner of my eye, and turn to look at them, and they’re not there, but my mind is totally off sex by then.’

  Zac was pleased at least to have an explanation that did not put him at fault. Just an interesting phobia that they could work on logically together. Hiding a smile of relief because he did not want her to think that he was laughing at her, he tentatively stroked her hand.

  Trying to jolly her up a bit, he began to kiss her fingers, tipped in purple, then reached over to turn the light off again. He put his arm around her, massaging, trying to get her to relax, gently pulling her back down again onto the pillows.

  This time, they moved together with the shy tenderness of new lovers. Abandoning any willed rhythm, Zac let his arms, his legs and mouth travel mindlessly over her, and the immensity of her physical presence forced his senses to expand to encompass her gloriously full poitrine, her vast acreage of snowy white hills and downs …

  And then a novel thing happened to Zac.

  He felt what it was like to be unthinkingly bien dans sa peau, experiencing this as a little death. Not unpleasant, after all, if this was the stilling of the mind.

  And Cicely, who had slept alone for so long, grown unwillingly used to the consolation of mere phantom lovers, felt once more the simple animal joy of the skin to skin embrace that these etheric beings could not offer.

  And afterwards, knew again the lost bliss of dreamless sleep.

  Cicely

  It had been cold that night, three months ago now.

  After a few Baileys, Cicely had headed off quite independently as usual to her own bed, clutching her hot water bottle in its soft crocheted coat. She may have said to Odette that it must be nice to cuddle up to a man on a freezing night like this. Something like that. But she hadn’t meant …

  Two women.

  One man.

  No jealousy.

  Had it been Cicely’s decision to change beds? To slip under the covers of a bed not her own? Had she and Odette decided between them? Or had it been Odette’s own idea, feeling pity perhaps for Cicely’s single state?

  Yet ever since school it had always been Cicely who had rescued Odette. In fact Cicely had always assumed that she was in charge of her, though she was only three years older. They had been in the same class, but Odette had been packed off to start school at the youngest legal age, whereas Cicely had been kept home to help her invalid mother until the last possible date. The girls had become inseparable from their first day at school, Odette becoming instantly the younger sister Cicely had always wanted, and Odette revelling in the novelty of focussed attention.

  Dressed only in a cotton slip even in that wintry weather, Odette had put her strong arms around Cicely that night, taken her hand and pulled her gently down the hall towards the couple’s bedroom. They had been giggling, half drunk. Just a lark. Had Odette really meant her to go in? Truly? To share Zac’s warmth?

  With one last push, Cicely had found herself inside the darkened bedroom. The uncurtained window had let in enough street light for her to see that the room was empty. She had got into the bed, nervous not because he was Odette’s lover – after all she had been quite insistent – but because it had been more than five years since she had made love that last disastrous time. She had been afraid that at the vital moment, her old phobia would reappear.

  At first, feeling the warmth of his arms around her shivering body, she had returned his caresses gratefully … but then it had happened again. The visions.

  Yet this time it had been different. Zac had held her back, when she had tried to run out of the room, refusing to let go of her hand.

  ‘Talk to me …’

  And he had listened, made her feel that hers were reasonable fears, after all. She had been able to blurt everything out under his questioning, and then, unburdened, return to the sanctuary of his arms.

  In the morning, Odette had brought them tea and toast on a tray. Three cups. Yes, she had meant to share everything with her.

  Zac soon grew to admire Cicely’s habit of knitting and crochet, seeing it as an efficient use of time and a clever generator of passive income. Even when she was just sitting with them watching TV, she was fully occupied.

  Only Madame Bovary had ever made the wool slip from Cicely’s fingers. The movie’s sentimental spell mesmerised both women. They knew the Jennifer Jones dialogue by heart.

  Now that Zac had untrussed Cicely’s magnificent poitrine, whenever the two women were together, he couldn’t help picturing them both stripped to the waist, revealing two sets of delightfully contrasting breasts. Thank God women weren’t really telepathic, as some at Inner Savage insisted.

  They were opposites, not only physically, but psychically. They shared an irritating neo-Luddite tendency. Neither owned a mobile phone, claiming that they emitted carcinogenic rays, or just bad vibes, depending on the day. Both owned completely outdated PCs which still used floppy disks, which they liked because they were so cheap. Neither drove.

  Cicely was a reclusive ponderer, with no friends other than Odette. Odette was an extrovert not given to self-analysis.

  Odette was always in motion, doing absent-minded stretches when standing, jiggling her knee when sitting, all this movement arousing him because he knew that the only time she was still was after he had made love to her.

  Cicely was sedentary, able to sit motionless, except for the steady clicking of her needles, for hours. This too aroused him, for he knew that he could bring out an unexpected agility in her, once he had her between the sheets.

  Odette smelt of the little vials of essential oils, patchouli in particular, that she bought from health food shops, whereas Cicely smelt of the cocoa butter she rubbed into her baby-soft skin.

  He loved them both.

  Mystery novel

  A kind of gloom suddenly enshrouded Cicely.

  Out of the blue, she announced that she wanted to sleep alone from now on.

  Analysing what might have changed, Zac noted only that Cicely had inexplicably started to watch films with empty hands. How small her resting hands were. When they had moved purposefully with the hook or needle, purple polish flashing, they had seemed longer and more elegant.

  Why, suddenly, had she abandoned her handiwork, even the cardigan of purple and magenta autumn leaves that she had seemed so devoted to?

  And she had become vaguer than usual, asking where things were when they were right in sight. She had had a series of careless accidents in the kitchen – a dropped jar of jam, a cut from a bread knife.

  Zac definitely did not want to give up the pleasures of having two such delightfully contrasting lovers. And yet, he couldn’t express too much disappointment in Cicely’s unexplained change of heart. He feared Odette would feel jealous. He might lose both of them. Unthinkable risk.

  So, trying to solve the mystery, to understand what could have driven Cicely to reject him so abruptly, he was driven to actually skimming through her novel, Last Chance, which had lain, untouched, in his bottom drawer for so long.

  And, as he had hoped, it was terrible.

  Rather than being a novel, it was merely a loosely connected chain of short stories, with recurring characters and varying POVs. Zac considered the linked short story genre a feeble, limp-wristed affair, suited only to the feminine temperament. His favoured form was, of course, the creative essay on the work of a top, but dead, author. Such as his own masterly Flaubert work.

  Memory has a habit of reshuffling its cards, and the fact that her book had been published before Zac and Cicely had even met conveniently slipped his mind as he skimmed through, pulled up sharply only by offensively jarring Bovary references. Had she no shame? So obviously his own influ
ence. What else?

  Lots of sex, surprisingly. In deserts. Jungles. On beaches. So many exotic location changes. It would make an amusingly superficial erotic film. Only the French would be able to do it, of course. Perhaps Lelouche, in the style of A Man and a Woman …

  The mystery, however, remained.

  He simply could not recognise Cicely in this at all. As far as he knew, she had never been overseas. Or had she? She talked so little about herself. He was curious to know how much direct experience Cicely had of these exotic lands, these electric lovers, so he read on.

  Flipping through more of its pages, he came to a story in which he recognised Odette. Clearly. The details of her life were so intimately drawn that, wondering why she had not objected, he decided to quiz her when next they were alone.

  She looked puzzled, then guilty.

  ‘I only like art books with pictures,’ she confided.

  ‘You haven’t read it?’

  ‘I pretended because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.’

  Cycles

  (A short story from Last Chance)

  ON THE WAY HOME from shopping, we always drove past the ashram, rising like a mystic mountain above the rows of BMWs and Mercedes. I always joked that joining the ashram would be a good way to find a rich boyfriend. I would regret that joke.

  Back home, Patchouli had a letter. As I handed it to her, I could feel a plastic card inside. Surely no one had given Patchouli a credit card? But she had just turned eighteen, and had added a few zeros to her income level. Patchouli was anxious to use her beautiful new credit card with the flashy little hologram of the dove of peace on it, and hit the web.

  I brewed up a nice little pure Assam, her favourite, in the green teapot and poured it into the shamrock teacups.

  By the time I brought her the tea, she had bought shares in a coconut plantation in Costa Rica.

  Patchouli took the cup, talking all the while about drinking coconut milk from the shell while stretching out on a banana lounge in Costa Rica. It was only 11.00 pm, and an expensive evening, considering neither of us had been out of the house. She must be the fastest person ever to max out on a new credit card with absolutely nothing to show for it.

  For the next few weeks, I watched her checking the mail for her promised shares and gilt-edged certificates. The Reader’s Digest sent an important-looking envelope, but that was the closest it got.

  What did come, eventually, was her first Visa statement. She now owed $3000 plus 23 per cent interest. Her reaction was to tear off and lick the $1,000,000 coloured coupons from the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes, then paste them carefully where indicated.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she wailed.

  We?

  I put my arm around her. I snatched the $1,000,000 Reader’s Digest coupons, before she stuck them all over her Visa statement.

  The next day I found the scribbled note.

  She had run away to the ashram to find a rich man. Was this the modern equivalent of running away to the convent? (If you ran away to a convent, would you still have to pay off your Visa?)

  There was no listed number for the ashram, so I drove over there. Close up, it looked more like a prison than a mystic mountain. I approached the iron grille set into the gothic wooden door. An Indian security guard in a military outfit that reminded me of a Michael Jackson costume waved me away with a baton.

  A few weeks later, Patchouli rang and said she had some news. That could only mean one thing.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  But she couldn’t talk over the phone. Would meet me for a coffee at Acland St. I rushed down to St Kilda through peak hour traffic wondering if she would bring him.

  At a cafe table outside Greasy Joe’s, we hugged each other. While I ordered chocolate cake and Earl Grey, she stuck out her tongue to show me the new silver ring that glittered on it, then ordered a glass of water with a half lemon squeezed into it.

  That was the first thing.

  The second was much worse.

  ‘On the first day, I met the owner of a BMW and the owner of a Merc. The BMW talks about how women are all after him for his money.’

  ‘How about the other one?’

  ‘The other one wears a tiny dressing gown he says he got when he was nine. The sleeves only come down to his elbows and it stops at his knees.’

  It was good to have a laugh again. But when I looked again, she was frowning.

  ‘That is just his material body, not the higher plane.’

  The waiter came back with my Earl Grey tea-bag and cake and told Patchouli that he was sorry but they didn’t serve glasses of water with half a lemon squeezed in.

  Patchouli’s eyes bulged and her face went red. He backed away.

  ‘He’ll get it,’ smiled Patchouli. ‘I made him.’

  ‘You made him?’

  ‘I have total control over the cycles of the universe.’

  I burnt my tongue on the tea. It was such a thick, horrible cup.

  She took my hand and put a small card into it. It showed a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, and the face of a smiling, shaven haired man.

  ‘Come and meet him. Then you’ll understand everything.’

  ‘Is this your rich boyfriend?”

  ‘I’m on a higher level,’ she replied, severely.

  See, the second thing was worse.

  Since that photo, he had lost all his teeth except one black one, centre top.

  And I could not detect any aura of sanctity around him, though Patchouli insisted it was radiant. This was clearly because of my retarded spiritual development.

  Actually, the first thing that struck me, apart from the near incomprehensibility of his speech because of his dental problem and the fat gold ring that pierced his tongue, was that he reeked – even at the fair distance of the visitors’ cordoned off section – of beer.

  The second thing was that in his talk, On Desire, to his disciples and the handful of visitors, he did not utter a single grammatically correct sentence.

  Patchouli kissed me goodbye after the guru’s talk. Only the elect could stay on. To delay my departure, I needed to provoke Patchouli. So I criticised the guru’s grammar.

  ‘I told you, he’s operating on a higher level,’ Patchouli explained patiently.

  I tried again. While I could agree that it was quite obvious that a general move towards spirituality was a good thing, I had severe reservations about her time frame. I saw its development as taking hundreds, perhaps thousands, even millions of years – like physical evolution.

  Patchouli and her new friends were desperately eager to be saved from Desire, now, and did not want to wait.

  I persisted, not wanting to leave her.

  ‘Isn’t the desire to escape from Desire, desire?’

  Patchouli shook her head.

  ‘I used to ask silly questions like that too,’ she said, and turned away.

  Patchouli’s purification, the guru decreed, would be demonstrated by the cessation of her monthly periods. When she had no period for three months, she would be ready for the Black and Gold Initiation. Until this happened, she was encouraged to leave the ashram for those five days of uncleanliness each month.

  So for five days a month, I welcomed her company. She lay on her bed, weak and drinking nothing but lemon squeezed into water, refusing even Welsh rarebit, her favourite, and even a cup of proper tea. But willing to talk endlessly about her new life. As long as I didn’t ask silly questions.

  ‘Do you think I look gaunt yet? That’s when your periods stop, when you are gaunt.’

  I had to be content with descriptions of her new life, because I was not allowed to visit her. It was a question of spiritual contamination. I tried not to take this personally.

  Soon, when she had transcended her female karma, completely controlled the cycles of the universe, she would cease to have periods at all. In fact, she said, she was convinced this would be her last one.

  When she went back, she would be i
nitiated.

  But she still wasn’t quite ready. There was another visit home, and she reported that the guru had selected a spiritual guide to fast-track her evolution.

  ‘With the correct linga for my yoni, taking into account my level of spiritual receptivity.’

  She could explain it all only on the ‘physically perceivable level’ – which was what I, unfortunately, was restricted to.

  As it turned out, Patchouli quite liked Bliss, her assigned lover, and had learnt the charms of macrobiotic cooking under his guidance, as well as Tantric sex.

  And in spite of being assigned to Bliss, Patchouli remained a spiritual favourite of the Guru himself. He liked her pierced tongue, so she lived rent-free, in return for a few housekeeping duties, in one of the guru’s many houses full of images of himself – beaming, perfect teeth.

  ‘It’s impregnated with incense and music from the spheres …’

  I had to admit it sounded better than my own single-fronted renovator’s delight in Epping, backing onto the railway line. The guru’s property was in St Kilda, with sea views. The house was Huon pine floors, with rugs hand-loomed by chained, genitally mutilated tribal girls. This was not, naturally, how Patchouli actually described the house, but how I resentfully edited it as she told me.

  Finally, a date.

  The initiation ceremony would take place immediately after she had made the guru co-signatory on her Visa card.

  ‘A gift for the guru.’

  Ahem. A debt for the guru, I silently edited.

  After the Black and Gold Initiation, she said, I would never see her again.

  ‘At least not on this plane …’

  She had been incommunicado for several months. I told myself I was not her mother, only her best friend, and that she was an adult, free to go on as many fugues as she liked.

  Then, one sunny morning, there she was on the doorstep again, looking scrawnier than ever, with her hair returned to its original mousey shade, a sure sign of distress. I hugged her, and I was relieved when she accepted a proper cup of tea. And wolfed down Welsh rarebit.