Clive returns; he affixes her clipboard to the foot of the bed.
“Love me, Clive?”
“You raise my happiness quotient massively. You’re my Himalayas!”
“You want to climb me?”
“No, Hon, you make me feel I’m soaking in minerals at Hepburn Springs.”
“Shouldn’t I be exciting you?”
“I’m stimulated at work. I’ll miss your healthy cooking, though. I’d started losing my pot belly!” He pats his mid-riff, proud as a peacock. “But you’ll be as safe down here as in a chastity belt at Pentridge. Goodbye, darling!” He blows Claire a kiss from the doorway.
Alex picks Claire up from hospital the following day. He wheels her to the car, helps her into the jeep; he arranges her broken limb on the back seat, snaps on her safety belt and packs the wheelchair into the boot.
He belts up but keeps his hand on the ignition key, thinking. “Who do you want?” he asks her, “Clive or Ma?”
“Clive,” she says, wishing she had a third option.
“Well, he comes bracketed with Mama. She’ll be part of your marriage. It’s potent, oedipal stuff. You sure you want to occupy one corner of a love triangle?”
Claire shrugs. “I’ve never found myself in a love twosome before.”
“Love isn’t for ‘finding oneself in’ but for falling helplessly into. It’s stepping in dog shit and not caring. If you’re not ready to decide, go see the world. Grow up,” says Alex.
“Clive says my innocence makes me special.”
“Especially naïve and malleable,” says Alex.
“Which bits of the world should I see?”
“Take a stab at the atlas. I ran away. Left uni. Learned a lot.”
“Why did you come back, then?”
“Everywhere is as interesting as anywhere,” says Alex.
“Then what’s the point of leaving?” asks Claire.
“Ha! You’ve a good bull-shit detector, Claire.”
“What do you want from life, Alex?”
“That’s private,” he says quietly. He leans forward, turns on the ignition. The jeep judders into life. Flat suburbs zip past them. They leave the landscape of Claire’s moral certainties behind, along with the convictions she’s lived by: ‘Thou shouldst love one man for life’ has been replaced by ‘fall in love weekly, provided thou keepst it in the one family’.
She sighs and studies Clive’s signature on her cast with an index finger. What a skite!
It has fat loops – serifs. Alex’s is sketchier. A high-peaked tent-like ‘A’ flows into a valley from where it rises gracefully. Al~~~d~. Claire feels Arabic tracing it.
Why, in 20 years on earth, has she fallen in love only twice? And why have these outbreaks of insanity occurred more-or-less simultaneously? Is an epidemic underway?
Alex takes more pleasure in manoeuvring Hal’s jeep through the Warrnambool back streets than Clive does in the rush of his Porsche along highways.
He rubs his chin. “Since you asked, Claire, I might as well tell you. You are what I want.” His eyes seek hers via the rear-vision mirror, piercing her calm.
She can’t speak for ages; when she does, she repays his honesty with nothing but juvenile false modesty. “I’m ordinary,” she says. His image in the mirror blurs.
“Do you love him, Claire?”
“I…I don’t know. We made love 27 times in four weeks but that was because Clive was tired. A point 9 average. ‘Not too bad,’ he said.” She claps her hand over her mouth.
“Ha-ha!” Alex laughs mirthlessly and pounds his thigh with his fist. “Point 9 of a fuck.”
“I’d never short change-you like that. With you, I’d be tireless.”
Claire is speechless. She knows something significant is happening, but she sits there in a bubble of silence. Alex too.
“Why?” she asks, once they hit a long, flat streamer of road.
“Why what?” says Alex.
“Why do you feel…you know?”
"That I love you? Romeo said it for me:
"’But safe! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East and Juliet is the sun’."
Alex, wheeling his arm, hits the cabin light, turns it on.
“The cabin light of my life is turned on, Claire. I’d happily be ‘crabbed, cabined and confined’ with you.”
“Imprisoned?” she asks. Apparently Alex decides her retort’s not worth a reply. “Juliet’s a love goddess. I’m a nobody.”
“You’re like a sunset; one diffused by long, low streaky cloud.”
“Like a bacon rasher?” she giggles.
Alex drives on, his face masklike. Claire wipes her eyes on her sleeve, fluffs up her hair. Odd, she thinks, even with our emotions in turmoil, we women want to look our best.
He angles the rear-vision mirror so he can catch her expression. “Forget I said it, Claire. It was wrong.”
“Said what?” Claire wants to hear him spell it out. Her cast is beyond help now. Tears and tears.
“Said what I said. It’s ten,” he says. “Let’s visit my sacred site.”
“I mustn’t get off on the wrong foot with Ma…” she says.
“That’s hilarious, Claire,” Alex says, swinging his arm over to pat her cast.
“I’m not getting into Cyn’s black books just to keep you company.”
“Then hurry home, and she’ll snap her trap on you like one of her carnivorous plants. She’ll watch you dissolve.”
Claire goes quiet while Alex negotiates an intersection.
“Okay,” she says, once they’re back on track. “Let’s phone. Fliss is coming for lunch. I can’t offend her. She seemed nice…”
“She’s good at seeming nice.”
“Okay,” says Claire. “Show me your sacred site.”
Alex takes a sudden right. They leave the main road. He drives in silence. At the signage point for a tourist drive, they head towards the coast through undulating sand hills scattered with grass, spiky as hair plugs. They meander slowly as if they’ve a lifetime to arrive.
The road behaves eccentrically, Claire thinks. What shire engineer would countenance a road that’s not Euclidian, in being the shortest distance between two points? Where granite boulders strike up through the sand, the road veers ever more recklessly. At last they pull into a lay-by beside a rocky outcrop and park.
“The view from the lookout here is fabulous,” Alex says.
“I can’t see…”
Alex eases her out of the seat. “Weight on your right foot,” he orders. He picks Claire up as if she were feather-light, he nuzzles her hair, luxuriating in the smell of her. She feels as if a boundary’s been crossed. She doesn’t mind. “It’s a pleasure to carry you, Claire. You’re like a pile of sheets from the clothesline drying in the sun.”
Chapter 38
Beach
Alex has been candid about his feelings for Claire. And now she feels her will’s been sapped; that she must follow the grain of her life, wherever it takes her.
In the late 1980s the science of pleasure is filtering down to laypersons. Until recently, love had been about vague and fuzzy ‘vibes’. Nowadays, endorphins – potent euphoria molecules – are known to act like drugs on the brain’s pleasure sensors, sometimes even overriding logic to convince us we’re in love.
Despite the strength of her feelings for Alex, Clive was the twin Claire saw first.
She’s confused, guilty. She’s no love maverick. Neither convent school’s ‘thou shall nots’ nor the subtler indoctrination of family have fitted her for loving two men at once.
Alex lifts her onto the bluestone seawall and jumps down onto the sand. She wobbles ungainly on one leg and two crutches, watching him running about, wheeling, hooning, and imitating seagulls until he’s scared all wildlife off the beach.
At the water’s edge, he plays tag with frilly wavelets, looking like maidens’ petticoats.
They chase him off the firm wet sand onto t
he softer, drier stuff. He backtracks as soon as another set gathers strength for an onslaught. Niftily, he dodges the waves, predicting the strength of each surge. It’s a territorial dispute; he’s winning it for now. His Blundstones remain dry.
He turns towards her. “Claire. I love you!” he shouts.
“No!” she yells into the wind. Yes, you must, she tells herself, silently. And forever.
“Too late!” he replies.
“Stop immediately.”
“Easier…earth…turn…ay.” Scraps of his sentence reach her on the breeze.
But focusing upon Claire is Alex’s undoing. He loses his skirmish with the sea. A wave rushes up his calves, drenching his boots and jeans. He charges up the beach, swooping in to land beneath the rock-wall.
“Get your jeans off,” she says, worried he’ll catch a chill.
“You want me nude?”
“No, I want to be nursed by a healthy man.”
“Heartless girl. Come, enjoy my great, big beach.”
“I can see it from here. Gorgeous. Cliffs like two big encircling arms.”
“You need to see it up close. The beauty is in the detail, Claire. My private rock pools are full of lettuce, sea-weed and sea cucumbers.”
“A mixed salad,” she says.
“Lean into me, I’ll help you down,” Alex insists.
“I’m cold.”
“He wraps his arms around her working foot plus the poor disabled one. Better?”
“Yes, that feels nice.”
“It could be nicer…”
“Let’s go, Alex. It’s time…”
’Yes, it’s time." Alex leaps up onto the wall. He unbuttons her coat. It’s warmer down there sheltered by the sea wall.
“Okay, you win. How do we do this?”
He jumps down. “Throw your coat, drop your crutches. Trust the universe to give you a soft landing.”
“If everything turns out for the best, then how come I fell off that bloody stallion?”
“The best isn’t necessarily about you, Claire. Clearly it was the stallion’s time to send someone flying. His fate. And yours. And mine. You had sick leave. I don’t have a proper job. Clive does. It worked out perfectly. I’m here and fit. And you’ve only your unimportant bits disabled.”
“If that’s your seduction spiel…get fucked…”
“Okay,” he says, grinning.
“I’ve promised to marry Clive. I’m committed.”
“Committed! Great word for a relationship, a madman or a felon. Don’t invite me to your committal hearing, Claire.”
“I’ll be in oyster silk or champagne taffeta,” she says. “With Mendelssohn.”
“The full cliché.”
“At least it’s my cliché.”
“It’s everyone’s, that’s the point of clichés.”
“So why did your Presbyterian God let bloody Beau Fils maim me? He brushed up against that nail on purpose. I saw evil intent in his eye. And why did He put me on the tram tracks for Clive to save, not you?”
“Because Clive wouldn’t have saved me,” Alex jokes.
“Ha-ha!”
“I don’t know, Claire, maybe He was trying to organise time for us alone.”
“Does God use stallions in His plans?”
“Maybe. Even a Hindu god would favour real love over a fleeting month of lust. Maybe you needed a wake-up fall. All right then, marry Clive if you must, exasperating woman!”
Alex rips his pocket lining inside out, spills scallop shells onto the sand. He forms them into patterns. ‘I heart CLA’, his message says.
“Who’s CLA?” she asks, smugly.
“I’m writing a letter to my favourite sea-creature – the clam – it’s tight and secretive, hard to prize open but worthwhile. Shit! Ran out of shells. He grins at Claire, taps her cast. Come, drop your crutch. Let yourself go. I’ll catch you.”
“I’m afraid of letting go,” says Claire.
“You know you have the urge. Give in to it. Come.”
“Okay,” she says.
Alex holds his arms wide. She drops her coat and her sticks clank onto the bluestone.
Does the hospital fine you for rough usage? she wonders.
But their timing’s out by more than a month. The instant she leaps, Alex turns to follow the flight of a heron.
Overbalancing, she screams shrilly, picturing her newly set tibia being wrenched apart, plus minor bones becoming infected with the novelty and fracturing too.
‘Don’t build on sand’, Claire remembers from the Bible. Sand won’t withstand the elements.
‘The centre cannot not hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’.
Pretentious ramblings but Yeats was Claire’s VCE poet of choice; he came to mind as she launched herself. Marvellous, she thinks, thinking and falling, how one idea leads to the next in a daisy chain of tenuousness.
Mid-fall, Alex senses movement. He’s too late to brace himself for her weight. His mouth forms a ‘no’ but having begun falling, no advice helps while laws of physics hold.
Her destiny isn’t unfolding, it’s exploding in her face.
Landed, at least she’s horizontal. Once more she’s fallen only to find herself face to face with a lovely man. Alex’s chest has been filled out handcrafting furniture, and not turned into a talking point by a false bosom apron.
“You okay?” they ask each other.
“I think so. The pain’s no worse,” she says. “Did I hurt you?”
“In loving Clive, not me.” He closes his eyes, goes quiet for a bit.
“Alex, I hate hurting you. I want everyone happy.”
He’s silent. “Alex, talk to me.” She pries one eye open. His eyeball has rolled into its socket. “Talk to me, Alex!” she yells, slapping his face.
He opens his eyes, leers at her and winks. “I may never have children,” he says. “You jumped me when I wasn’t looking. You couldn’t wait to have me, could you?”
“I could so wait.”
“So, you’ll wait for me?” he asks.
Claire beats her fists on his chest. “No, I’m not waiting.”
“Got to have me right away?” he says.
“God, Alex. Stop twisting everything. I want everyone happy and everything fair.”
“I heard you. Hoped I was hallucinating. Everyone happy? Go buy a Barbie doll.”
“I thought you were ready for me,” she says.
“I am ready for you, Claire.”
“You didn’t catch me. What if my fracture’s come unset?”
“Then I’ll be your personal slave forever.” He frees his arms, drags her duffle coat over them both. “Warm?” he asks.
“If I end up back in hospital, it’ll be okay provided you win the double-meaning game. You twins…so bloody flippant…”
“But lovable?” Alex plucks a handful of sand, lets it spill through his fingers.
Claire takes a tendril of seaweed. “We don’t fall for everyone we find sexy. Robert Redford’s sexy but…” she pops a bubble on its string of pearls. It feels good. She pops manically until her fingernails hurt. She could pop polyps forever. “What next?” she says.
“It’s up to you. You have the upper hand.”
“I’m disabled. I can’t hop up and run away.”
“Ease yourself up gradually, roll sideways. Move your good leg first.”
“Now you’re getting rid of me.” Saying this Claire’s aware of how illogical she’s being.
Alex grabs her hands to still them. She’s been drumming her fists on his chest, an unconscious reaction to their predicament. He brings her hands to his mouth and kisses them. “Oh, Claire, one minute you don’t want me. Next, I’m in trouble for helping you go.”
“You’re staring, Alex.”
“Your head is in my face! Your nose has 17 freckles? Don’t hit me. 17 is a prime number. But point 27 isn’t! Remember that next time Clive…”
“I wish I hadn’t told you that.” She makes to hit hi
m but strokes his stubble. “What next?”
“That’s up to you, Claire. You could plait my ponytail. I liked your French plait that first night. French kisses. French manicures. French letters. Why is everything racy French?”
She shrugs. “It’s not my sole responsibility.”
“Being French?”
“No, Dopey. Deciding…about us…”
“We could flip this shell? Let the clam decide. Heads we kiss, tails…?” He flips then palms the shell before she sees how it’s fallen.
Chapter 39
Bacon and Eggs
If two falls aren’t bad enough, it’s my third fall – the one from the seawall – that lands me in hot water – morally, if not literally. Alex is family, our intimacy violates a taboo. On the peaks of Mt Parnassus Greek gods are rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation of my comeuppance.
Despite my bung foot, I didn’t sin inadvertently like Oedipus. But how gravely I’ve transgressed!
Diary Entry 1:
I’m convalescing chez Cynthia. I write when not shelling peas or darning socks or soaking up sunbeams during rare sunny arvos in the courtyard.
My fracture’s healing slowly. Cynthia threatens to send Alex home. Luckily, I’m too heavy for her to manage or Alex would be gone by now. We behave with circumspection – she’s not buying it.
Nor is Hal. His questing tortoise neck twists from A’s face to mine, verifying what he knows & dreads.
Goals
Stand up to Cynthia.
Forget Romance. HEAL!
Write
I get four hours a day of congenial company from Alex. He’s giving me the classical education I missed out on chez the nuns; he encourages my writing, greets me each morning with a brotherly kiss on the brow.
“How’s Joyce James?” he asks. He jokes, teaches me chess; he leaves during phone calls with Clive.
Ministers tactfully to my needs.
“Why aren’t you getting on with your chair?” I ask.
“When I’m with a woman like you, I’m not tempted to spend all day in the workshop,” he whispers. “Once you’re off your crutches, we’ll drive to Port Fairy, to the island where the Shearwater nest.”
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