“Who’s this?” Over Delia’s shoulder, Malcolm pointed to her dance partner.
Delia shrugged. “No idea. Just someone who was at the party, I guess.”
It was Erris Cleary, her savage haircut plastered to her skull with her husband’s Brylcreem, Erris as Jay Gatsby in an op-shop suit. Among a group of men standing to one side of the dancers, Roger’s face was swollen with drink and disgust. Malcolm didn’t notice this, so Delia said nothing. Erris’s husband, the doctor, was nowhere in sight, having stalked off to retrieve their coats just before the picture was taken. Delia recalled the flash-bulb exploding, and how moments later he had loomed beside them, long thin fingers clamped around Erris’s wrist.
“Time to go,” he said. “You’ve had too much to drink.”
Without breaking step, Erris had twisted free. “But I’m having so much fun,” she said. “And I’m not ready to leave.”
That morning, Delia and Erris had gone together to the hairdresser, both, as they discovered on the bus, disgusted with their husbands – Erris because she had learned that John Cleary had talked to her gynaecologist about her at a hospital social function, Delia because Roger refused to eat cereal and insisted she cook bacon and eggs, even on mornings when she’d been up and down all night to the children. Delia hadn’t known that Erris was planning such a radical cut, and she’d been shocked to see her hair lying on the floor of the salon – a warm chestnut mass, enough to stuff a small pillow. Meanwhile, another stylist had talked Delia into a new kind of perm. She called it a ‘Min Vague’, and afterwards Delia’s hair was minimally curly, it was vaguely waved: the two of them had almost wet themselves laughing at this as they walked from the salon. At the bus stop, helpless with laughter, they had waved the first bus on and waited for the next one.
It was Erris’s haircut that had shocked people as much as anything she did that night. After all, everyone was drinking, everyone was dancing, just not as wildly as Erris, and not with just one partner. But it was as if the hilarity of the morning had crept into their bones; they felt awfully avant-garde in their retro dress-ups, they felt, as they screamed to each other over the music, “so Min Vague!”
Delia didn’t remember getting home from that party, but she remembered Roger dismissing the babysitter and then dragging her into their bedroom. The flapper dress was curtains again; he pushed her down onto their bed.
“Roger, please! You’ll wake the chil …”
Next day, as she nursed her hangover, Delia’s right eye-socket had filled with blood. She had hidden it behind dark glasses, but everyone knew, from the teachers at Katie’s school to the woman at the corner shop. For Delia, being punched by her husband marked the end of the marriage, though it had gone on a little longer while she worked out an escape plan. The strangest part was that she had not felt sexually attracted to Erris that night, as Roger had insisted everyone at the party believed. But in the weeks that followed, all she yearned for was to rest her cheek in the curve of Erris’s white neck. She had imagined the two of them, lying together in a quiet, sunny bedroom, their soft exchange of breath, their bubbling laughter.
She had moved back to live with her mother. With Katie to care for, no job and no money, she’d had no choice. The first night after she left Roger, waking early, Delia had sat up and leaned into the lemon sunlight streaming through the uncurtained window, and the ache in her chest was all for Erris.
Delia’s GP has carried out a cognitive assessment and the results are not as terrible as she has feared. Still, he recommends further tests with a memory specialist, and Malcolm takes her to the hospital for her appointment. They arrive with thirty minutes to spare, and slip into the ground floor cafe. The first person Delia sees is Claire Delaney – Claire, at whose house, all those years ago, the now infamous fancy dress party was held.
“Delia!”
Claire hasn’t weathered too badly, considering the years that have passed.
“I’m waiting to visit a friend,” Claire says. “It’s Tommy’s wife, Rosanna, actually.”
Delia hears the words ‘breast cancer’, she hears ‘double mastectomy’. She says how sorry she is. “It must be horrible.” She asks Claire where she’s living now, hoping she won’t ask why she’s at the hospital.
“I’ve been in the same little flat for years,” Claire says.
Malcolm has drifted to the counter to order their coffee, so Delia tells Claire that she, too, would like somewhere smaller, but Malcolm is attached to their eco-house. While Claire describes where Tommy and Rosanna live, Delia allows herself to picture a cottage like the one their eco-house replaced, something pretty, with a soft brush fence rather than their rock-filled wire cage. The wire is beginning to show signs of wear, and this makes Delia anxious. She remembers Malcolm telling anyone who would listen that the life expectancy of gabions relies on the lifespan of the wire, not on the contents of the basket.
Delia flicks a nervous glance to where her husband hovers before a display of cakes, all of which are disastrous for his heart. He will not buy one for himself, but he will choose a treat for her, and as Claire rattles on about her ex-husband, Delia experiences a wave of affection for Malcolm. Ever since he stumbled into the bookshop that time, he has been doggedly devoted. She sees how dear he is, how gentle.
Claire is talking about Erris Cleary. “It was in the paper,” she says. “She’d had a breakdown, but that was a while back.”
“Oh! I had no idea.”
Delia realises that Claire is speaking of Erris in the past tense, a mock-solemn tone that means Erris is dead, or in serious trouble. Delia tries to think … Erris had been the youngest of all of them … she can’t be more than … fifty-two or three. With shocking clarity, Delia hears Erris’s warm, cigarette-grained voice: I was a child bride! She hears her friend’s self-deprecating laughter.
“There were a few from the old days at the funeral.” Claire leans closer. “Not that she particularly cared for any of them.”
Delia’s throat aches with tears. Most days, she will struggle to remember what she ate for breakfast, yet suddenly here she is, flooded with grief for the loss of a long-ago moment, and for other moments that must have passed unnoticed between her and Erris – at all those barbecues in someone’s garden, at the beach, or at drinks after tennis – moments around which her life might have begun to pivot, to evolve towards happiness. If she had been truly avant garde, if she had been less Min Vague.
Murmurations
The lawn had been partly shaded by the house when the boy started digging, but by mid-morning he was under the full blast of the sun. He turned the peak of his cap to the back but still he could feel the skin on his neck burning, so he got a towel out of his kit bag and draped it around his shoulders. The garden behind the old sandstone house had been allowed to go a bit wild, but it was still lovely. The boy thought it a pity the lawn was being cleared, but the owners wanted to do away with mowing, they wanted to minimise their water use. Sheltered by ivy-clad stone walls, the garden was like one in a book he’d once read, though the title eluded him. Also, it reminded him of home – that overgrown plot beyond the ruined potting sheds. The boy leaned for a moment on the shovel, staring into the shadowed back corner of the garden, and something passing through his mind caused him to lower his face, and slowly rub a hand across his eyes.
The boy’s boss, Len Robsart, had delivered him to the site with a selection of shovels. There was another job in progress on the far side of the city, which Len would tackle alone, and at the end of the day he’d return to collect his apprentice. Len was a big, easy-going man, with a darkened front tooth and a slight limp from a digger accident during his own apprenticeship. When they had met, the boy had liked him on sight, judging him softer than his rough appearance suggested, and he had made up his mind to throw his full effort into working for Len.
A sod cutter could have dug up the lawn in a morning, whereas it was going to take the boy the best part of a week. It wasn’t that Len was mean
, but he had given a fixed quote and he was anxious to maximise profit. He had explained how in summer the landscaping business went quiet, and that it would pick up again after the holidays.
As the boy marked out the next square of turf with the shovel blade, a curtain in one of the windows twitched. When he and Len had arrived, a woman had emerged from the house to hand over a key to the side gate. She was rumpled-looking, all edges, with sharp cheekbones, and strands of grey in her hair that she hadn’t bothered to dye; she was wearing faded jeans, and a floral blouse fastened at the top with a safety pin. Because of the missing button the boy had thought she might be the cleaning woman, but after she had gone back inside, Len said it was her house, and that her husband was a doctor.
All through the morning, as he hacked at the matted grass with his shovel, he sensed her watching from inside the house. Eventually he looked up to see her standing on the small porch off what looked like the kitchen.
“There’s a jug of iced water,” she said. “Take a break.”
Obediently, he pressed the shovel into the turf with his boot, dropped his gloves beside it and crossed to the porch. Two steps up; it was shaded with a vine. He hesitated, sweaty and awkward, blistered hands dangling helplessly.
“You can come up,” she said.
On a small wicker table, the doctor’s wife had set out a water jug and a glass, and a bottle of sunscreen. On either side were two wicker chairs.
She gestured towards the sunscreen. “I thought … in case you forgot to bring some,” she said.
Her voice sounded full of fog, like she had a cold. Close up, her face had a strained look, and her eyelids were red and puffy: he wondered if she’d been crying. He peeled off his cap and stepped up onto the porch. She poured water without touching the glass, ice cubes tinkling as they tumbled over the rim of the jug – he thought it a lovely sound, and already felt cooler.
“Well, I’ll let you sit and catch your breath,” she said, and as he stammered out his thanks she backed through the door and disappeared into the house.
He took the chair furthest from the kitchen door and reached for the glass of water. Small birds darted among the vine leaves overhanging the porch roof; he could see their flickering shapes in the shadows cast across the painted verandah boards. When the jug was empty he squeezed sunscreen into his palm and rubbed it over the back of his neck, then stroked the residue over his nose and cheeks. Inside the house someone had turned on the television, a sit-com with wave after wave of fake laughter.
Next day he took a broad-brimmed hat he’d found hanging on a peg in Len’s shed, and filled an old soft drink bottle with water. At the house he unpacked the shovels, and his kitbag, and set his water bottle in the shade. He wanted the woman to know he wouldn’t be putting her to any trouble while he was digging out her lawn. When Len drove away, the boy turned and glanced towards the house. It looked empty, though he couldn’t have said what was different. As the day wore on there was no sight of the woman, and by the time Len picked him up he’d concluded there was no one at home.
The following day, at around midday, the woman came out of the house carrying a cardboard box. She walked past him and disappeared around the side of the house; he guessed she was putting something in the shed. Uncertain and embarrassed, he could feel himself flush: should he have offered to carry the box for her? Would that be considered polite, or pushy? He had no idea how city people expected him to behave. Furious at his own ignorance, he resumed digging, slicing the grass and swinging the shovel with an almost manic energy. The woman returned and went into the house, and after a while she appeared on the porch and invited him to stop for a cold drink.
She was a little jittery, he noticed, but her eyes, two sapphire chips, gave off sparks.
“Your dad should’ve got in a machine to clear the grass,” she said. “Digging in this heat’s likely to kill you.”
“I’ll be okay,” he said. “And Len’s not my dad.”
“Oh?” She stared at him for a moment, then waved him towards one of the chairs and disappeared into the house. When she reappeared she was carrying an empty glass – to his consternation she sat on the second chair and filled her glass from the water jug.
What’s your name?” she said.
“It’s Arthur, Ma’am.”
“I should have realised.” She smiled, and her glance seemed to take in the whole of him – from his too-big nose and his freckled ear lobes below the dark thatch of hair, to his lanky body that was only not awkward to him when he was asleep. “You don’t look at all like you’re related, you and Mister Robsart,” she said.
He sipped his water in silence, allowed an ice cube to melt on his tongue.
“Where’re you from, Arthur?”
He went to say he was from the city now, because the old life had shut behind him like a back door slammed by the wind. Instead, he heard himself telling her he was from the island.
The surprise and curiosity in her voice sounded genuine. “Have your folks always lived there?”
Arthur shook his head. “I was raised in The Star,” he said. “It’s a children’s home, The Star of Bethlehem.”
The woman took a slow sip from her glass. “You seem to have left pretty young.”
“Boys can’t stay in the home once they turn fifteen,” he said. “Girls can be older.”
“That’s rough on the boys. Have you been working long for Mr Robsart?”
“About six months,” he said. “Ma’am, he isn’t a bad boss, even if he didn’t want to get in a sod cutter.”
“Yes, well I suppose he knows his own business,” the woman said, but all the energy had ebbed out of her and her voice had turned vague, as if suddenly she was thinking about something else. By the time he went and picked up his shovel he could hear the television going inside the house, the canned laughter of a comedy show.
Next morning the woman appeared on the porch almost as soon as Len’s truck drove away. She sat in one of the wicker chairs, smoking and watching him dig. Around noon she went inside, and brought out the jug of iced water and a plate of sandwiches.
“Come on, Arthur, time to cool down.”
When he stepped onto the verandah he saw that she had also brought out a tube of antiseptic cream, and a pair of white cotton gloves.
“I noticed you had blisters,” she said. “You have to be careful they don’t get infected.”
Arthur was flushed from the sun, and from the effort of digging, and now he felt the stinging in his palms where the blisters had burst but it was like a warning siren went off inside him: it was good of her to put out the cream, but it scared him, too, this intimate observation by a stranger. Although if it hadn’t been for Len’s missus, he might have just accepted that the doctor’s wife had a kind heart. Arthur squirmed away from the thought of Barbara Robsart – the sly liberties she took when her husband’s back was turned.
But his immediate problem was that he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with the cotton gloves. Somehow the woman must have divined this, because she picked them up off the table and handed them to him.
“Wear these inside your heavy gloves,” she said. “They’ll cut down the rubbing, give the blisters a chance to heal.”
He nodded warily, and folded the gloves into a pocket.
The woman filled his glass, and offered the plate of sandwiches. “Do me a favour and eat something,” she said. “I love to feed people, and no one ever comes around for a meal anymore.”
Her speech was a tiny bit odd today, he thought, but maybe that was just him, and his nerves that had been set aflutter when Len’s wife intruded into his thoughts. His hand shook as he reached for a sandwich, but the woman appeared not to notice. She had begun to tell him a story about herself.
“Like you, I left home young,” she said, “because after my mum died, my father remarried.”
She hunched forward in her chair, and Arthur saw that there were bruises on the insides of her arms, and that her unpainted
nails were chewed. He noticed, too, the habit she had of clasping one hand with the other, like she was holding her own hand for comfort.
“Marcy was a terrible woman, but he wouldn’t hear a word against her,” she said. “Of course, she was sweet as pie all the time he was there, but as soon as he walked out the door she would start tormenting me.”
Arthur’s mouth filled with saliva. Missus Robsart had come up behind him that morning as he stood drinking his tea in Len’s kitchen – Len had gone outside to the shed; they could hear him banging about in there, cursing over a misplaced saw. When Arthur had put down his tea cup and turned from the sink, she had caught his hand and squeezed it against her ample breast. He had felt the thump of her heart, and her nipple, hard as a peanut, had rubbed against his palm. Even now he could feel the place where it had pressed, and he writhed with the memory of it, and with feelings for which he could not find words.
Sweating, vaguely nauseous, he drained the glass of water the woman had poured for him.
“I used to record in my journal what Marcy said and did. One day while I was at school she found where I’d hidden the book, and she put it in the fire. When I told my father he said, ‘Now Erris, your mother wouldn’t do a thing like that. Don’t tell dirty lies!’” With her lips pressed tight, she shrugged. “So he beat me to show Marcy he was on her side. But it wasn’t the beating made me decide to leave, it was because he’d called Marcy my mother.”
“How old were you?” The question slipped from Arthur’s mouth before he could stop it, and he was shocked that he’d dared to ask her anything: him, the landscape gardener’s labourer, questioning her, the doctor’s wife.
“Fifteen,” she said. “Like you, Arthur.”
“I’ve turned sixteen,” he said, unable to keep from his voice a shy note of pride.
It was the same pride he felt in the inches he’d grown this last year, and in his arms that were no longer soft as a pair of sausages but muscled and strong. Secretly, too, he was proud of the fine dark down that shadowed his upper lip, the private parts that were nested in soft black curls. Somehow, this physical growth, the transformation of his body from child to man, felt like the only thing he had ever entirely owned, the only thing that had ever been truly private. Yet it was this that Robsart’s wife wished to steal.
Murmurations Page 8