The Essence of the Thing 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 Stairway to Paradise, 1999. The Essence of the Thing is her third novel.

  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 1997

  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 1997 by Fourth Estate Limited

  This edition published by The Text Publishing Company, 2009

  Cover and text design by W.H. Chong

  Cover and page illustrations by H.B. Swann

  Typeset in 12.5 /18.75 Granjon by J&M Typesetting

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  St John, Madeleine, 1941-2006.

  The essence of the thing / Madeleine St John.

  ISBN: 9781921520921 (pbk.)

  Separation (Psychology)--Fiction.

  813.914

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government

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

  For Judith McCue

  Contents

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  69

  1

  Nicola was still standing in the doorway when Jonathan began to speak: she hadn’t had time even to take off her coat. It was a cold spring evening: one still needed a coat out of doors after dark.

  She was standing there in the sitting-room doorway, her hands in her pockets, holding onto the packet of cigarettes she had gone out to buy, and the loose change, and the keys; she hadn’t had time even to put these things on the table, and take off her coat, and sit down, because Jonathan had called out to her as soon as she’d shut the front door behind her.

  ‘Nicola?’

  But in a tone of voice which seemed odd to her: too sharp, too urgent: and she’d stood, perplexed, in the doorway, her fingers having suddenly tightened around the cigarettes, the keys, the loose coins: ‘What is it?’ she said. Is something wrong?

  Jonathan was sitting at the far end of the sofa; he turned his head just enough to enable his eye to catch hers. He gazed at her for a moment and then he spoke again. ‘Come in here,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  What was he saying? Nicola was paralysed by dread—a dread which in weaker doses had become almost familiar to her during the past few months: now, with this preposterous invitation, Come in here (for where else might she have gone?), this ominous announcement, I want to talk to you, she saw that something wholly dreadful had at last begun. She saw this, but part of her mind failed truly to grasp it. So she stood, dumbfounded, in the doorway.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked again. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Wrong is one of those words which sound like what they signify, not by virtue of onomatopoeia, but by virtue of a more subtle correspondence: the same being true, to a lesser degree only, of right. There is right and there is wrong: the knowledge that there is right and wrong is part of one’s English-speaking birthright: these attributes could not imaginably achieve the same terrible finality in another formulation. This is right, said the Anglo-Saxon warrior, and that is wrong. And to be in the wrong is to be cast into a waste of ice and darkness which is the ultima Thule of devastation. One might nevermore return.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ She could see as she uttered the word that something was, indeed, wrong. The ice and darkness filled the room.

  Jonathan shrugged very slightly and then got impatiently to his feet. He leaned an arm against the mantelpiece; if there had been a fire he would certainly have poked it. As it was, he looked unseeingly at the objects at his elbow and moved a china poodle dog. Then he looked up at her
again. ‘There’s no nice way to say this,’ he said. ‘But I’ve decided—that is, I’ve come to the conclusion—that we should part.’

  The ice and darkness were now inside her: all her entrails froze.

  ‘I think I’ll sit down,’ she said.

  Her entrails had frozen, but her ankles had turned to water. She walked unsteadily over to the sofa and sat down, huddling her coat closer around her. Her hands were still in the pockets, still holding onto the cigarettes, and the loose change, and the keys. She dared not look at him, and yet she knew she must. She saw that Jonathan’s face was a perfectly composed mask of calm assurance.

  There was still a part of Nicola’s mind which did not believe that this conversation was really taking place, and so it was possible to enter further into it. It was a sort of joke, it was the sort of joke which might be perpetrated in a dream: in the alternative reality where there was no right, no wrong. There’s nothing wrong, she found herself thinking: this is just a sort of joke which I haven’t yet understood.

  ‘I don’t think I understand,’ she said. ‘Could you just say all that again?’

  2

  Jonathan had been looking downwards, as if in search of the atavistic poker, the atavistic fire; he now looked up once more.

  ‘I want you to move out,’ he said. ‘Sorry—there really isn’t a nice way to say this, as I said before. Sorry. It just isn’t working. I mean, you must know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Move out,’ Nicola repeated dazedly.

  There was this dreadful lurching feeling in her stomach and she had begun to tremble. Her fingers closed more tightly around the keys, the money, the cigarettes. This was a very nasty kind of joke; it did not seem possible that it could ever become funny.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘Well—that is—I’ve thought about this, obviously—’ He was suddenly on much firmer ground: he was down to brass tacks, now. Brass tacks were his stock-in-trade, he being after all a lawyer. ‘I mean, yes, I could move out, of course, and you could stay here, if you wanted to, but I just assumed you wouldn’t want to take it on. I mean, I’m offering, obviously, to buy you out.’

  Her state of shock was only intensified by each succeeding sentence. He was offering—obviously!—to buy her out. She had said nothing, and so he went on. He was looking carefully at the china poodle dog.

  ‘I’m assuming, of course, that you wouldn’t want to buy me out.’

  Couldn’t. He means, couldn’t. How very tactful. Of course she couldn’t. Nicola worked in the publications department of a famous, but medium-sized, arts organisation. She found that she was not trembling quite so much now, and might dare to speak.

  ‘No,’ she said, quite evenly. ‘I wouldn’t.’

  There was a very brief pause: you could hear the silence.

  ‘In fact,’ she went on, ‘I wouldn’t want you to buy me out either.

  In fact, Jonathan, I don’t believe I know what you’re talking about. I don’t believe this conversation is really happening.’ She got up. ‘Look, I’m going to hang up my coat,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to make some tea, okay? And then you can tell me all about it. Because just at this precise moment I don’t understand what the fuck you’re on about. Excuse me.’

  And she left the room.

  3

  And although she was still in a state of extreme shock, and still trembling, she was beginning now to see—to realise—to understand— that the thing which was truly wrong was not so much the dreadful scene into which she had just been precipitated, as the misapprehension (whatever it might be) which had given rise to it: she was beginning now to understand—and she became more certain by the minute—that Jonathan’s ‘conclusion’, however rational in itself, could have derived only from a hugely wrong, a wholly false, initial assumption, and that all that was now necessary was the careful discovery of this assumption and the calm revelation of its falseness. Now that she knew what she must do there was nothing truly to worry about, nothing truly to fear. She had stopped trembling; she went and made the tea, and took it into the sitting room.

  They were both silent while she poured it out; she handed Jonathan—still standing at the mantelpiece—a cup and then she began to take the cellophane off the cigarette packet.

  ‘I’ve asked Winkworth’s to send someone round on Monday morning to do a valuation,’ Jonathan said. ‘I thought that was the fairest way. Property prices haven’t moved much since we bought this place, but I thought if we got a valuation now, I’d be prepared to give you your share of the current value or your original stake, whichever is the greater. If you see what I mean. Can’t say fairer than that; I hope you agree.’

  Nicola lit a cigarette.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t possibly be fairer.’ She inhaled. ‘There is a problem, though,’ she went on.

  ‘Oh, I suppose you’re thinking about the f and f,’ said Jonathan. ‘I’m sure we can sort that out easily enough.’

  ‘No, that’s not it,’ said Nicola.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Jonathan, do sit down.’

  He looked reluctant, but did so. She took another drag. Even though she had seen what she must do, it wasn’t easy to begin.

  ‘The problem,’ she said, ‘the problem is, that I don’t actually understand what all this is about. I mean, something has evidently gone wrong, badly wrong: and I don’t have a clue what it is.’

  Jonathan looked surprised, and even slightly pained. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s gone wrong. Nothing in particular, that is. No, truly. It’s just the whole thing. It’s us. We’re wrong. I mean, as a couple. I thought you’d realised that as well as I had. You know how it’s been. Well. Need I go into it?’

  If this was the initial assumption, the revelation of the falseness of which would lead to the collapse of Jonathan’s entire argument, then hard as it had been to begin, it would be harder still to continue: his speech had thrown her into a state of even deeper shock and pain. She began to tremble again.

  ‘I evidently don’t know how it’s been,’ she said shakily. ‘Of course we’ve had our sticky moments, every couple does, but—but— I thought we were happy.’ And with these words she began, at last, to cry. Her tears began to fall quite heavily; she could not speak further, and began even to sob.

  Jonathan, sitting at the other end of the sofa, took a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her silently—a large square of rumpled, but clean, linen. She buried her face in it and wept uncontrollably for some minutes. The world she had inhabited having been smashed to pieces (whose jagged edges cut her wherever she turned), it was the only natural thing to do.

  4

  Jonathan waited, staring into the fire which was not there, until Nicola’s tears subsided; at last she blew her nose, and looked up. She could almost have wished her tears to continue, for the icy darkness of this dreadful new consciousness. Whatever was wrong was deeper and more secret an affair than she could have guessed. It lay in the very heart of their lives, it lay in them, it lay, for all one knew, in their actual souls: if souls they possessed.

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said once more. ‘I don’t understand anything you’ve said.’ And she could not have spoken, could never have spoken, so truly. Her whole mind was black with incomprehension.

  Jonathan had stood up again; he leaned once more against the mantelpiece. ‘I think that rather proves my point, doesn’t it?’ he said.

  Even now she could not quite believe that he could say such a thing to her, at such a moment. She was silenced, but at the same time she found that tears had once more filled her eyes. She picked up the handkerchief and wiped them away, but more came; she was on the point of sobbing again. ‘It’s just the shock,’ she found herself thinking; ‘it’s simply the shock.’

  Jonathan made a shrug of impatience. ‘Please don’t cry any more,’ he said. ‘It really isn’t helpful.’ He poured some more tea into her cup. ‘Here, drink this,’ he said. ‘You’ll feel better.’r />
  She left the tea where it was.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve taken this so—hard,’ he said.

  She knew, instantly, that he had been on the point of saying ‘badly’, and had stopped himself just in time.

  ‘I really didn’t expect it. That you should have thought we were happy was the last thing I expected. But there you are. We don’t understand each other, as you said. We’ll be much better off by ourselves.’ And he said this almost with satisfaction. It was clear that he thoroughly believed it.

  It was only now that the likeliest, the most banal, explanation occurred to Nicola’s dazed and grief-stricken mind.

  ‘Is there someone else?’ she said.

  She looked at his face carefully, steadily. His surprise was unmistakable; he even looked rather affronted by the suggestion.

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I would have told you if there had been.’ There was a pause. ‘No,’ he continued. ‘No one else. Just us.’

  ‘Us,’ she repeated. ‘And now, it seems, there’s no us.’

  He said nothing: an infinite boredom seemed to have possessed him: she recognised that expression, she remembered this sensation: he had hardened his heart, and closed his mind, against her. He would answer no questions, he would be cold to every appeal; she was altogether, for the present time at least, shunned. She recognised that expression, she remembered this sensation of death-in-life, and she was filled with a desolation which made her tears of a few minutes ago seem luxurious.

  ‘Jonathan,’ she said; ‘don’t do this.’

  He ignored her. She might not have spoken. He picked up the tea tray. ‘I’ll sleep in the spare room,’ he said. ‘Are there sheets in there?’

  She looked away from him with a kind of disgust, and ignoring this too he went on. ‘And by the way, I’ll be away at the weekend— parents.’

  Just so. And tomorrow was Friday.

  ‘I’ll go straight down after work. Okay?’

  She shrugged slightly, still speechless, and got up.

  ‘Well, goodnight,’ he said blandly. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  She stared at him dumbly, and left the room. Having been cast out by him, she now found—as she had found before—that she was capable only of speaking and acting, even to a degree apparently of feeling, like a stranger. But struggling, terrified and helpless, a loving and trusting Nicola shrieked in anguish from the depths of this stunned and frozen stranger.