A Stairway to Paradise Read online

  PRAISE FOR The Women in Black

  ‘Seductive, hilarious, brilliantly observed, this novel

  shimmers with wit and tenderness.’

  HELEN GARNER

  ‘A knock-out—ironic, sharp, alive, and then you’re stopped

  in your tracks by the warmth of her insights. Australia

  as we suddenly remember it…’

  JOAN LONDON

  ‘A major minor masterpiece, a witty and poignant snapshot of

  Sydney the year before yesterday.’

  BARRY HUMPHRIES

  ‘This book is like the perfect, vintage little black dress.

  It’s beautifully constructed, it evokes another time while

  being mysteriously classic and up-to-date, and it makes

  you feel happy. I love it.’

  KAZ COOKE

  ‘In The Women in Black, Madeleine St John evoked the collision of

  modern European history and the still-awakening Australian culture

  with an economical intensity that no other writer has quite matched.

  The reader could start with any page of her brilliantly compressed

  dialogue and realise straight away that this is the work

  of an exceptional writer.’

  CLIVE JAMES

  ‘A delicious book. Funny and happy, it’s like

  the breath of youth again.’

  JANE GARDAM

  ‘An exquisite novel that has been lost to us for far too long—you’ll

  find yourself re-reading it every time you need to be reminded that, in

  Camus’ words: Happiness, too, is inevitable.’

  DEBORAH ROBERTSON

  ‘A comic masterpiece…acute, touching and very funny.’

  BRUCE BERESFORD

  Madeleine St John was born in Sydney. She graduated from Sydney University in 1963 and lived in London for most of the succeeding years, until her death in 2006. Her novels include The Women in Black, 1993, A Pure Clear Light, 1996, and The Essence of the Thing, 1997, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. A Stairway to Paradise is her fourth novel.

  A

  Stairway

  to

  Paradise

  MADELEINE ST JOHN

  TEXT PUBLISHING MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA

  The paper used in this book is manufactured only from wood grown in sustainable

  regrowth forests.

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  www.textpublishing.com.au

  Copyright © Madeleine St John 1999

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Fourth Estate Limited

  This edition published by The Text Publishing Company, 2010

  Cover and text design by W. H. Chong

  Cover illustration by H. B. Swann

  Typeset in 12.5/18.75 Granjon by Midland Typesetters

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  St. John, Madeleine, 1941–2006.

  A stairway to paradise / Madeleine St. John.

  ISBN: 9781921656118 (pbk.)

  Discontent—Fiction. Desire—Fiction.

  A823.3

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government

  through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  For Kathy Kettler

  Contents

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  PART TWO

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  PART THREE

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  PART FOUR

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  PART ONE

  1

  Barbara for some reason insisted on sitting in the back, so she got in first, ducking past the front passenger seat and then thumping herself down; and sitting there, arrayed, with her large bag—what the hell was she carrying around?—beside her: great, she said. This is just great.

  And then the two men got in, Andrew sitting where she ought to have sat, his long legs hunched up uncomfortably, but half-turned around to face Barbara, as if politely not wishing to have his back towards her, because he was well, he was impeccably, brought up, was Andrew: Andrew’s manners were sometimes enough to bring tears to your eyes.

  So he was sitting there in the front passenger seat, half-turned towards big velvety Barbara in the back, when Alex got in behind the wheel, even more hunched up than Andrew.

  ‘This your vehicle, is it, sir?’ said Barbara to the back of Alex’s head.

  She knew perfectly well that it was actually Claire’s weeny run-around: but Andrew didn’t know that she knew, because Andrew knew, precisely, rien.

  Alex simply grunted and turned on the ignition. But then he paused a moment. ‘Who’s first?’ he said.

  ‘Well—’ said Barbara.

  ‘I suppose it had better be you,’ said Alex.

  ‘My sentiments entirely,’ said Barbara. ‘Rev her up then, gov.’

  Alex, silent, let out the clutch and drove off.

  Barbara knew that silence. Barbara knew the exact meaning of the present set of that neck, the tension it harboured, the quality of the explosion to come. Ah well, she thought. Not my problème. She waited until they were crossing Battersea Bridge before she spoke again. ‘Is there by any chance a sound system in this motor?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Alex shortly.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Barbara airily. ‘Never mind.’ And she began to sing an old Gershwin number about love being blind.

  And so it went on, through Chelsea, South Ken, the Park, Paddington, and so on, northwards—you know the route—all the way to bloody Belsize Park: a good big intolerable slice of the George Gershwin songbook.

  Andrew’s long legs were half asleep by the time they reached Barbara’s house; stiff with cramp he got out of the car and waited for Barbara and her big bag to emerge.

  ‘Well,’ she exclaimed. ‘Here we are indeed! I won’t ask you in—hope you don’t mind. Terribly late.’ She bent over and looked at Alex through the open door: he was sitting rigid, mute, over the wheel, just waiting. ‘Good night, lover,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the ride. I’ll do the same for you sometime. Take care!’ She straightened up: Andrew still st
ood, waiting to re-enter the car. ‘Good night… er,’ she said. ‘Andrew.’

  ‘Good night, Barbara,’ he stuttered. Oh, God, if I could just ask her for her telephone number—I can’t. Impossible. Oh, God. And she’s gone. He got back into the car, demoralised, in a turmoil.

  Now they were on their way to Islington, through the bright half-empty two a.m. streets, in silence, each possessed by his own ghostly, ghastly confusion of thought and emotion.

  ‘You’d better direct me from the Angel,’ said Alex, ‘okay?’

  ‘Right, right,’ said unhappy Andrew. Here now was the Angel. ‘Right here. Now second left.’ And so it went on. ‘Just past that Volvo.’

  The car stopped.

  Andrew turned to his friend, his old, old friend from Oxford days, whom he hadn’t seen now for ten years. Andrew had just returned from ten years’ teaching in the United States, and his broken American marriage. Sadness and failure, sorrow and grief. And his little American child whom he would now see once a year, for a month in the summer. Failure and grief. Pick up the threads of the old life, the old English life—English life: sweet, sweet rice pudding, lumpy and sweet and deceptively bland: except that it wasn’t there any more, not that sweet, sweet pudding he’d thought he remembered, no, not quite, no, not really: no, not at all. Was it? See the old friends: the dear old friends, their manners deceptively bland, their values deceptively relative, their wits like long sharp needles: except that they too weren’t quite there, any more; they weren’t quite where he thought he remembered their having been. Nothing was as he’d thought it would be; he was just trying, now, to find a place where he could get a foothold, a piece of ground one could actually put one’s foot on, stand on, without going under, the water over one’s head: he’d been back here for, what, three months, and he was still treading water, trying to find the ground under his feet. Alex, now. He, at any rate, was still married to Claire (but now had two children) and still worked in Fleet Street. Which wasn’t in Fleet Street any more.

  2

  Alex craned his neck and looked up at the facade of the house. ‘Which bit is you?’ he said. ‘Have you got the first?’

  ‘The second and third,’ said Andrew. ‘Thought I might as well have two bedrooms. For when Mimi comes over, and so on.’

  There was a moment of cold, painful, saddened silence.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Alex.

  ‘Won’t you come in for a moment?’ said Andrew ‘If you’re not too shattered.’

  Alex hardly liked to refuse, in the circumstances. That cold, painful sadness. ‘Not a bit,’ he said.

  There were the two men, hovering about vaguely in Andrew’s brand-new rather empty sitting-room: a battered chesterfield (very expensive), an armchair, a coffee table: the Eye, the Economist and the Independent.

  Alex picked up the last by a corner. ‘Oh, you read this thing, do you?’ he said with a wry smile.

  ‘Well,’ said Andrew. ‘Thought I ought to catch up. It’s new since I went away.’

  ‘Like everything,’ said Alex. ‘And nothing.’

  ‘Ye-e-es,’ said Andrew. ‘Everything. And nothing.’ Oh, God, he thought. He was in perpetual pain. But he was brave, brave, brave.

  ‘Barbara, for example,’ he said.

  ‘Barbara?’

  ‘Isn’t she new?’ asked Andrew.

  Alex’s face might have seemed to darken for an instant, even to show unease, but Andrew was not looking at it: Andrew was looking sidelong at the floor, because Andrew did not want Alex to see the avidity with which he was pursuing this topic shining from his eyes; Andrew did not want Alex to know what he was feeling about Barbara.

  ‘Not very,’ said Alex. ‘Well, new since your day, of course. Technically speaking. Well, perhaps actually speaking too. Yes, very possibly. All right, she’s new. The absolutely modern, the truly contemporary woman. How do you like her?’

  Undressed, said Andrew to himself. He almost laughed at the pleasantry; almost laughed with delight at the idea of undressing Barbara and helping himself to what he would then find. Her skin was so smooth, so golden. She had lustrous golden-brown hair. Careful, careful. He was too busy with his thoughts and their concealment to notice his friend’s tone and the perturbation it betrayed; still now he was avoiding Alex’s gaze, filling the electric kettle, getting some mugs from a cupboard in the galley kitchen at one partitioned-off end of the sitting-room. ‘She seems…well…new.’ She’s as new as the dawn. ‘Interesting. She tells me she’s never, ever, had a proper job. Remarkable.’

  ‘It’s just a generational thing,’ said Alex dismissively. ‘Graduate unemployment, and so on.’

  ‘No, but—I mean, how does she manage?’

  ‘Oh, ask her,’ said Alex drily. He could bear no more of this.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Andrew. ‘I mean—do you know her well?’

  ‘Hardly at all,’ said Alex. ‘She’s more Claire’s—well, friend isn’t quite the word, I dare say. They used to see each other a fairish bit, a few years ago. Not so much now I think. Perhaps not at all. I hardly know her.’

  ‘What’s that place where she lives?’ asked Andrew. ‘Looks rather a good address for someone without a job.’

  Alex laughed. ‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘The benefits system here is really interesting.’ He laughed again. ‘As it happens, however,’ he said, ‘she has in fact a sort of job at the time of speaking. The flat in Belsize Park is a tied cottage. She cooks and cleans for the people in the house. She gets the basement flat rent-free in return. Plus they pay her fuel bills. Not bad going.’

  Andrew laughed. ‘So she’s a servant,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alex.

  They both laughed.

  ‘Some servant,’ said Andrew.

  They laughed again. They were both in pretty desperate need of laughter at this juncture, were these two.

  ‘Does she sing for them?’ asked Andrew. More laughter.

  Alex stopped laughing. ‘No, she only does that when she wants to annoy me,’ he said.

  Andrew looked at him. ‘I thought you said you hardly knew her,’ he said. They were both sitting down now and Alex was making a spliff.

  ‘So I did,’ said Alex; ‘so I did.’ He licked the gummed edge and fastened the whole thing up. ‘Here you go,’ he said, and he handed it to his host.

  Andrew went to the kitchen and fetched the matches. He took a drag and handed it back to Alex. What was going on? Who was watching over whom? ‘How is Claire?’ he asked.

  Alex took a while before answering. ‘As I told you,’ he said. ‘She’s fine. She’s fine, is Claire.’

  ‘Pity she missed the party,’ said Andrew. ‘Sorry not to see her there.’

  ‘Well, you can’t have everything,’ said Alex. ‘Not even Claire can have everything. Can’t go on holiday to Brittany and go to a party in Battersea at the same time. Isn’t a reasonable proposition.’

  ‘Maybe she’s been at a party in Brittany,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Yes, why not?’ said Alex. ‘Well, but—do they have parties in Brittany? Doesn’t sound likely to me. What do you think? Did you ever hear of a party in Brittany? Ever get asked to one?’

  ‘I suppose those hats would get in the way,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Yes, that would be it,’ said Alex. ‘No future for those hats at a party.’

  ‘Do you think Claire has got one of those hats?’ said Andrew.

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ said Alex. ‘She goes in for authenticity these days, Claire does.’

  ‘Usedn’t she to?’ asked Andrew. He hadn’t actually ever known Claire at all well: Claire wasn’t from the old crowd; Claire was a trouvaille of Alex’s own.

  ‘Not as such,’ said Alex. ‘Not as such.’

  ‘And Barbara,’ said Andrew, ‘does she go in for authenticity?’

  Alex thought for a moment, or perhaps his mind was merely wandering, under the influence; Andrew waited. Andrew knew the form.

  ‘Very
probably,’ said Alex at last. ‘Shouldn’t be at all surprised. Probably where Claire got the idea, come to think of it. Yes, Claire probably caught it from Barbara. Wouldn’t surprise me at all.’

  There was another brief silence.

  ‘She’d look good in one of those hats,’ said Andrew. ‘I can see her dressed up à la Bretonne.’ Dressed, undressed, dressed up—Barbara, all golden-brown.

  ‘What?’ said Alex, astounded. ‘Claire? À la Bretonne?’ He began to laugh. Poor Claire. Poor Claire, bien sûr.

  ‘No, you moron,’ said Andrew. ‘Barbara, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You’ve got that girl on the brain,’ said Alex.

  Fuck, thought Andrew. The cat’s out of the bag, and no mistake. Pretty pussy, nice pussy: come here, puss, nice bag, come on in, puss. He laughed. ‘Looks like it,’ he said. The dope was wearing off. That was how it seemed to go, these days. It was after three a.m. and he was feeling sober, and very soon he would be abandoned to sadness and solitude and pain once more. ‘She’s so…juicy,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alex. ‘She is that. But authentic with it. You want to watch out for these juicy but authentic types. Bad combination, from the masculine point of view.’

  Andrew looked at him carefully. ‘You speak from experience, I take it,’ he said.

  ‘Not me,’ said Alex. ‘No. Just observation. The times we live in. Juice, plus authenticity. There’s a lot of it about.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Andrew. He was thinking, I could just go up there: I can remember the house. The flight of steps, the urns with geraniums, the number: 51. Impossible by public transport. I’ll have to buy a car. He was going to buy a car (which heretofore he had told himself he would not need) in order to go and see a woman who had only with difficulty remembered his name: because he wanted watching over. Because we all do.