by
Helen Garner
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The imagery V uses in ordinary speech, loaded with reluctance. ‘I’ll dump you off at work.’ ‘I said I’d cart her round the bookshops.’ ‘We’d better get rid of’ (i.e. eat) ‘those potatoes.’ ‘I suppose I’ll drag m’self into town.’ As if the ideal were stasis.
Janet Malcolm’s big New Yorker essay on the biographers of Sylvia Plath: boom! She shows me that the things I’m too timid to write can be written—that I should trust the stuff that my inner censor has been telling me to scrap. Meanwhile, in the New York Times someone reviews a book: ‘a model polemic, full of autobiographical detail, conversations with friends, family and colleagues, and debates the author has had with himself and critics.’ Is that what a ‘model polemic’ is? I think maybe I can do that.
G writes. He has been present at the birth of the baby, a girl with ‘long, splayed fingers: I think she could manage a tenth already, on a proportionately reduced piano. I’m dizzy with exhilaration and lack of sleep—exalted, absurdly happy. Is there a plan, Helen, or is it just women carrying on with life, civilising through that peculiarly feminine self-abnegating and unselfconscious love? In awe and wonder, your respectful friend.’
British Airways messed up our flight to Madrid and our English friends had to go on ahead without us. V handled the desk staff so brilliantly, never losing his cool, that he got us a refund for the whole trip, including the hotel, and we even still went, at BA’s expense, though not arriving till dinner time. Astonished and impressed by the patient charmingness of his negotiations. H: ‘We’ve really had a nice day, haven’t we, in spite of our visa troubles.’ V: ‘Yes, and it’s because I was in charge.’ I laughed; but we’re locked in an endless power struggle. When we see couples who are cheerfully loving we exchange sad, wry glances. I suppose he thought we would always be ‘in love’. My next task: to pick up at speed enough Spanish to handle the weekend here, without threatening his need to be seen as running the show.
:(
Since my drunken fall in New York I have hardly any sense of smell. I read in Janet Malcolm about a patient of Freud’s whose sense of smell went away while she clung to unrealistic fantasies that her employer would return her love and marry her. I ask myself what my ‘unrealistic fantasies’ are, or rather, what I am declining to say bluntly to myself. And out it comes: ‘I regret having got married. I regret my loss of freedom.’ Okay. I regret it. But I also accept it, accept my regret, and decide consciously that I’ll try to stay married, and will make serious efforts to be more generous, less angry, less controlling, less reducing. I state to myself, too, that for all the faults I find in him V is a clever, funny, decent man who puts up with my craziness and tries to be kind to me. And that while there are thousands of ‘wrong’ men out there, there is no such thing as the ‘right’ man.
The harbour. I can hardly comprehend its constant differentness from itself. Today wide slow ridges, ten feet apart, move towards me at a slant and softly collapse against the low stone wall. Taking notes—this little discipline—is a defence against the blank wordlessness that overcomes me when I stand at the window and look at the water. Why do I feel I have to conquer this state, subdue it, flail away at it with my vocabulary? In fact it is a tremendous gift. A chance at the soul.
The adventurous beauty tells us about her lover in India.
V: ‘What are his good points?’
AB: ‘He’s deep, serious, moral…’
V: ‘What are his bad points?’
She hesitates.
H: ‘He’s deep, serious, moral?’
She laughs.
AB: ‘Exactly. He doesn’t much like to play.’
lollll
In the street we ran into a Labor MP I vaguely know. She teasingly asked V if he was giving me ‘plenty of support’ since my book came out. V passed it off with a quip but at home later he launched one of his rants against stupid, cliché-ridden, impertinent, presumptuous, offensive women. A heavy vibe filled the flat. After careful thought about my wording I asked whether there was any reason why her question had so violently got under his skin—did he feel perhaps that I hadn’t properly acknowledged how much support he had been giving me? My attempt at humility didn’t cut much ice. He said this hadn’t even crossed his mind, and that he was furious because I ‘didn’t give a shit’ about his opinions of her; I hadn’t even looked up from the paper. Finally I said, ‘All right. Next time I’ll pay more attention.’
The bad vibe is still hanging around, hours later. I don’t know what this is about; and I’ll never find out by asking V, because he doesn’t know either. He truly believes it’s about the politician.
damn
The Age calls my agent, offering me ‘six figures’ for ten pieces a year, on anything I fancy. I say I’m happy at the Independent Monthly. The editor of the Australian summons me to his office. I go out of curiosity. He lolls behind his desk, I perch on a chair. Sums of money are mentioned, and a carrot: one day, he says smoothly, I ‘might even get to interview the prime minister.’ I stare at him, too amazed to say, ‘Is there anything in my work that makes you think I might be interested in interviewing the prime minister?’ Walking home I think, ‘He hasn’t read your work, you idiot, and he never will.’
lolll
I think I am in the classic position of a woman artist who in order to maintain a marriage is obliged to trim herself so as not to make her husband feel—what? Something a man is not supposed to have to feel? This must be one of the reasons V is so against it when I have to do publicity. It’s also perhaps why he is encouraging to me about doing journalism. He is as generous as he can possibly be about my book and its success, but if I had success like that with a novel there’d be serious trouble—I don’t know what trouble exactly, but life would get tougher. Why are men so fragile? If he were getting more attention than I was, everyone would be at ease, it would be seen as normal and appropriate. Tilt it, and everything gets unhappy and shadowy. Maybe it’s true then. A woman artist who wants to develop as far as she can needs to live alone. He is a better novelist than I am—he can handle broader ideas, more characters etc—this is not the problem. The problem is that my success seems to get in his way. It somehow stops him from working.
What to do? I could accept without further complaint his demand for uninterrupted occupation of the flat. Work harder at cooking. Do less publicity. Pull my horns in. How dismal.
she's not wrong