How Do I Love Thee? (33 page)

As Liz climbed the hill towards her home, she mused on how their lives seemed to have mirrored each other’s. Both she and Elizabeth had been made sick by the loss of a loved one … Elizabeth had become an invalid through grieving over the drowning death of her beloved brother Edward in Torquay in 1840; similarly, Liz was constrained to social and personal incapability by her husband of ten years who had left her a year ago to live in Melbourne with some witless catwalk model who’d flashed eyes and thighs at him during a party one night and seduced him away.

Both she and Elizabeth were prisoners of their bedrooms, too incapacitated to leave, too panicked by the pressures of life to re-enter society. And both she and Elizabeth came from a strict upbringing, and were doing things which would drive their fathers, if they knew, into apoplexy. Okay, Liz’s father would have disapproved of her going onto dating sites on the internet, whereas Elizabeth’s father had actually forbidden any of his twelve children to marry, but even if the comparison was stretched to breaking, both had suffered the strictures of an uncompromising and brutish parent.

Liz Brown—even their names were remarkably similar—arrived home as the winter light began rapidly to fade and the city lights gave form to the skyscrapers and monuments
beyond the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The hill was steep and she was out of breath by the time she climbed the steps of her apartment block, but it was about the only exercise she got; the rest of her day, after she’d walked from her home to the station, then to school six stops further up the line, was spent sitting at her desk in the classroom, teaching feckless girls and drooping boys in years 10, 11 and 12, the ephemeral joys of English literature.

But it was when school was over and Liz was free of the pouting and the preening, of the silliness and the trivia, when she returned to Waverton station and walked to her tiny attic apartment, that she became the person she most wanted to be. It was in the solipsism of her room that she entered a universal world, one which freed her from the restraints of being an abandoned woman, an object of pity, a social pariah.

Tonight, as she’d done every night for the past three months when she arrived home, she switched on her computer, put the water on to boil for a cup of coffee, fed her sycophantic cat who viewed her leg as a monument to sensuality, and sat to read her emails.

Three from a blog, two from a chain of book retailers, four from different airlines … and one from Bob or Romeo or whatever name he chose to use today. Her heart skipped
as she quickly opened it up and read the contents, even as the kettle screamed in the kitchen for attention.

Hey, lovely lady, how goes it? Got your last email. Loved it. So, what you up to? Me? I’m hanging. Okay, not much good for a guy who’s thirty-six but I’m waiting for you to write … just staring at the screen, waiting for you to get home and tell me how your day’s been.

Okay, so it was banal. Ordinary. Artless. She’d tried to engage him in conversation by asking him questions which demanded more than some phatic response, but so far to no avail.

Their cyber relationship had started well. She’d met him on a dating website which she’d joined for only thirty-five dollars a month. She’d uploaded her details, keeping her identity very, very private, and had only given her avatar a name. The name she’d chosen was Midlife Bloom, which she’d hoped would be self-evident, but the initial responses she’d received were discouraging. The men who’d written to her either had an IQ of less than fifty, or a stratospheric sex drive and were quite open about what they’d be able to do in performance terms if ever they met. Both approaches put her off. About to quit the site, Romeo had suddenly written to her, and she’d initially been charmed. Not boastful, he had been respectful and tender with his approach; somewhat naive, but mature enough to attract her interest.

He’d begun by telling her that he was attracted to her name because that’s exactly how he saw himself. Then he’d apologised for his poor expression, because he was a migrant from South America and his English wasn’t all that good. So, like any respectable teacher, she’d attempted to guide him to higher and higher planes of expression, but there seemed to have been a plateau, probably in his thinking, which stopped him from developing as she’d hoped.

Maybe she was expecting too much; maybe, following Wittgenstein’s theory, his thoughts in English couldn’t develop before the growth in sophistication of his language. But after three months of a pleasant and growing intimacy, never once veering into the obscene but rarely rising above the mundane, she was becoming impatient with his unsophisticated responses.

She answered, and he immediately responded. No, she wouldn’t meet with him yet. Yes, she was living in Sydney and she could meet easily if she wanted to, but she wasn’t into meeting people until she was very sure of their intentions. No, she wouldn’t send him a picture, even though he’d sent her his, and he was, by any standards, good-looking in a South American smouldering Mr Darcy sort of way.

After half an hour of to and fro emails, she excused herself, changed into her tracksuit, and settled down to another night of television.

The next evening, she carried her cup of coffee over to her computer. She’d noticed that there was less pace to her switching on the computer, less of a frantic rush to see if he’d written to her. And as the screen glowed into action, she saw that he had, indeed, written to her. She sat and read what he had emailed early that morning.

Hello, Miss Bloom. How are you this afternoon? And how was your day at work. You know, Miss Bloom, we’ve been writing to each other for many weeks now, and I think that it’s time I told you something. Even though we’ve never met, we’ve never touched our hands together, I think of you as you plod your weary way homeward, as if you were leaving the world to darkness and to me. You know, Miss lovely Bloom, you have turned my heart into some celestial fire and I know that I will forever be in your favour, even if we never meet. But I hope that one day, one glorious day, we will meet for coffee and then who knows … maybe you’ll see hidden depths in me that you can’t see through a computer …

Stunned, she read and reread the email four or five times. ‘Plod your weary way homeward’; ‘leaving the world to darkness and to me’; ‘turned my heart into some celestial fire’ … what was going on? Suddenly he had vaulted from banal to poetic, from boring to inspiring.

She immediately wrote to him.
What beautiful phrases, how well you’re expressing yourself … have you suddenly taken English lessons? Are you copying from a book? What are you suddenly doing to write with such grace?
she asked.

Realising that he was sitting at his computer, waiting for her response, his reply came immediately.
I’m hurt that you should think I can’t write or speak well. Okay, so I’m using some words from a poem, but why shouldn’t I? Poets can say things better than most of us, so why is it wrong to use their phrases?

She assured him that it wasn’t wrong and continued to converse in a spirit which was far more heartened than in previous weeks.

It wasn’t until the next night, when she returned home and switched on her computer, not even taking a moment to make herself a cup of coffee, that a nagging concern began to niggle at her brain. She read his email, written that morning, and it was certainly delightful. But something was wrong.

Dear Miss Bloom, or may I call you Midlife—is being on first-name terms too familiar? When will you tell me your real name? And what you do? I’ve been open with you … don’t you think you should be open with me? I understand your need to protect your identity, but we’ve been writing to each other for a long time, enough, dearest Miss Bloom, that I’ve fallen in love with your image, the face you present to me … yes, not you yet, but the image you give out through the screen.
I can’t even count the number of ways in which I’ve fallen for you. I love you freely, as a man like me strives to do the right thing. I love you with a passion that’s like the faith of a young child. I love you with the breath and smiles and tears which I want to share with you, in life and death. Won’t you meet me, Miss Midlife Bloom, and share the joy I feel in writing to you? Please.

She didn’t respond. Instead, she stared transfixed at the screen and ensured that she wasn’t hallucinating, that the words with which she was so familiar, that she’d massaged and fondled and expounded before her class the previous day, were actually the words he’d written to her in his email. Bob or Romeo—whatever he sometimes called himself—had quoted phrases which she had taught only twenty-four hours earlier to her class. My God, she thought, were they all conspiring to make a fool of her? Was her class huddling around some computer at night, giggling and laughing and composing lines in order to expose her as a lonely, simple, hapless divorcee?

In a state suddenly bordering on anger, Liz opened her briefcase and took out
Poems from the Portuguese
and turned to the sonnet in question.

Yes! She wasn’t hallucinating. Here were the familiar phrases. Okay, so he’d altered them and had taken the rhythm away, but the words were there in an all-too-familiar pattern.
And she scrolled upwards to his email of the previous night and reread his words, which now, terrifyingly, took on an altogether different and more menacing cadence. The phrases he’d used were from Gray’s
Elegy
.

Could this be a coincidence? Was her English class setting out to snigger behind her back? Or was she being menaced by a stalker? Was her secret cyber lover actually a nuisance, or worse, a life-threatening danger? If it was a man, was he hacking into her computer, reading her notes and finding out the most intimate details of who she was? For blackmail? So that he could turn up one day, unannounced and unwanted and intrude into her privacy? Force himself into her home. Molest her.

She had to compel herself to be calm. Show that she wouldn’t be intimidated by them. Or him. No, she mustn’t tell him that she’d discovered his secret—she must be far more subtle than that.

What lovely words,
she wrote to him,
what beautiful sentiments. Come on, Romeo or Bob or whatever name you’re using today, you got them from a book, didn’t you? From a poem. What poem was that?

She knew he wouldn’t respond immediately and so went to make herself a cup of coffee. When she returned, she was surprised to see his email.

You got me. It was from a sonnet which begins ‘ how do I love thee, let me count the ways.’ I read it last night and I thought of you.

Why that sonnet?
she wrote back immediately.
Didn’t Shakespeare write some beautiful sonnets? I remember that there was one with something like ‘the darling buds of May’ or something. Why did you choose ‘ how do I love thee?’.

Don’t know … it was handy. I’ve got a book of poems and I came across it, and for me, it explained a lot about my love for you … or the woman who is supposed to be you in cyberspace … confusing isn’t it.

They emailed back and forth for another half an hour, but she learned nothing more that might be of use to her. So she decided to lay a trap. Next morning, Liz Brown marched into the school grounds, a woman with a purpose. One thing was uppermost in her mind—no class of witless kids was going to make a fool of her. And most certain of all, no man—in real life or in cyberspace—was going to intimidate her; not again; not ever.

She’d been intimidated by her husband in their last year of marriage; even before he’d admitted to his affair with the model, even when she knew their marriage was in trouble, she’d allowed herself to be manoeuvred into a corner, to play second fiddle when they were in company, to be the butt of his unkind remarks, which their friends didn’t recognise
as hurtful but which cut her to the quick. Had she fought back, had she demanded respect, then she might have been able to turn the situation around, but she gave him too much leeway, thinking his coldness, his aloofness came from problems caused by his business. By the time she realised that she was his problem, it was too late to do anything. So she’d become the other woman, the victim, the injured party, pitied by her friends, and the subject of whispered and denigratory comments by his.

And for a year, a whole year, she’d retreated to her room and her solitude, only rarely going out and then to school functions or social gatherings for birthdays or special occasions. To compensate for the loneliness of her exile, she’d become an internet fanatic and tried webzines, fanzines, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and countless other social networks which all proved vapid and transitory.

And then she’d read about a dating site which sparked her interest. For the past three months, she’d corresponded with dozens of men. By far the vast majority were feckless, rootless, unhappy and sexually depraved; a few were appealing, but when she expressed interest in them, they immediately seemed to become satyrs and suggested barbaric practices or acts of gymnastic absurdity which did nothing to excite, and actually offended her.

All that changed when along came Bob, or Romeo, or whatever his name was. He’d charmed her, albeit without good English, and she’d warmed to him. She was just beginning to evolve back into society, and was even considering meeting him in a crowded coffee shop, when suddenly he had shown himself to be just like the others—somebody who was using her as a plaything.