She stopped suddenly. A noise, fierce, hard, a gun shot. Then another, and another. The air punctured with sound. Coming from the lake, of that she was sure. Dogs barking, voices shouting, more shots, clapping, barking, and Ginnie unable to move. And suddenly a rush of people. ‘Has it started?’ they shouted. ‘Have we missed it?’ Swerving around her, down to the lake.
Ginnie moved from the path, over to a small clump of trees where she sat down and watched the people. She waited, five, ten, fifteen minutes, and finally the guns were silent; but still the dogs barked and the people shouted.
A solitary figure emerged from the bushes near the lake and walked up the now-deserted path. A man, perhaps twenty-five, maybe older, rubbing his eyes, shaking his head. As he drew parallel with Ginnie he looked up, looked her full in the face and shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of futility. She said she didn’t know what had happened down there, she heard the guns but did not know. And he told her: an exhibition of duck shooting, tame ducks raised in captivity, raised for the shooters’ pleasure. His voice struggled, he shrugged again and walked on.
‘Why don’t you stay here a while. No one will bother you.’
He looked at her, for a long time he looked. And then it happened, he leaned down and picked up her sticks as if they were nothing more than pieces of wood and put them to one side; then he sat next to her in the shade. People don’t touch your sticks, don’t touch this, the rawest disability; skin at least has some familiarity, but crutches are crutches. He moved her sticks and she was aware of a profound physicality like finding herself in someone’s arms.
The two of them sat quietly, he, leaning against a tree with his eyes closed, Ginnie, brilliantly alert, gazing at the distant hills. Now and then she looked at him, studied his small soft frame – not fat but without ugly bulging muscles – the bare legs and slender hands. His hair was almost black and very curly, his skin olive without being swarthy. You would have expected a heavy beard but his cheeks were as soft as the rest of his body. And in the face was melancholy, pronounced even while his eyes were closed and despite the laughter lines. He must have known she was looking at him, people always do, but he let her be.
When at last they spoke it was with ease. His name was Ben and he was there because his parents were friends of Adrian Dadswell’s. Ben lived in Sydney, had flown down for his father’s sixtieth birthday. It was supposed to have been a quiet family celebration, but when it coincided with Adrian’s opening, Ben’s parents and sisters decided the celebration should take place at Eden Park ‘where all their friends would be anyway’.
Ginnie told him why she was there. He was surprised to learn that Adrian had a daughter.
‘I wonder why he’s kept so quiet about you.’ He paused, lips pressed together. ‘Do you think it’s because of your disability?’
The word struck hard, as it always did. Her first reaction was to make him suffer. ‘Oh?’ she might have said, ‘it’s never occurred to me.’ Or, ‘Only a very shallow person would consider such a possibility.’ A punishment reply. But she held back and calmed herself – why should mention of her disability always create such fear? – and told him how she used to think her disability was behind Adrian’s rejection, but now she realised it was a simple matter of indifference.
Ben nodded, leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He was quiet for two or three minutes; Ginnie watched the long fingers tapping his cheeks, his foot rubbing a hollow in the loose dirt. When at last he spoke he was tentative. ‘Surely,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s difficult to determine exactly what effect your disability has on the behaviour of others. If I were in your position it would be such a temptation to blame my disability every time something went wrong or someone treated me badly.’
And why not? she thought, the disability saturated her life. She turned away, disturbed and yet intrigued: he had touched upon the central dilemma of her young life. She must have smiled.
‘Have I said something humorous?’
Still she remained silent, as if time could make her decision. But time as usual did nothing but pass. Finally she spoke.
‘How do you know about that?’
He told her about his friend who was a paraplegic, it was one of the issues they had discussed.
‘And what did your friend say?’
‘He told me how difficult it was to keep his disability in perspective. He told me that if he hadn’t had twenty years of being able-bodied, twenty years of the usual problems and rejections that pepper this life, he would have had no way of determining the relevance of his disability to other people’s actions. Having had those years though, he thought it best to assume that when someone treated him badly they probably would have done so irrespective of the disability; otherwise, he said, he would spend all his time protecting himself and blaming others.’
‘Easier for a paraplegic, they’re more acceptable. I expect he had a glamorous accident – ’
Ben nodded. ‘Skiing.’
‘ – a glamorous accident and already had lots of friends, maybe even a career. Paraplegics are more normal than not.’
Ben was looking at her, a smile on his face. Can you hear what you’re saying? his expression said, listen to yourself. She did, and started smiling too. A hierarchy of stigma? what an absurd idea! It was then they noticed the people coming up from the lake, first only a trickle then a thicker stream. Suddenly Ben stood up, he’d just seen his parents, and he wanted to avoid them. He was reluctant to leave, Ginnie could see that, pulled out pencil and paper and asked if he might ring her. She nodded, gave him her number and he was gone.
The people were lively, consulting maps and each other as they strolled up from the lake. They all wanted a cool building and a cold drink and they wanted them immediately. Ginnie could hear their voices quite clearly through the sullen summer air – cool buildings and cold drinks but no word about the shooting. How convenient it was, Ginnie thought, that the all-consuming interest of one minute could be so readily extinguished in the next. She wondered as she watched the flow which were Ben’s parents, but it was impossible to know, everyone looked much the same; wondered, too, if he would ring or whether he had merely used a polite means of escape. She recalled his hand on her sticks – for a person like her, certain moments endured – and knew that irrespective of whether she met him again the moment was hers.
She decided to wait for the paths to clear before making her way to Eden Park Lodge for the official opening. She rested against the tree and closed her eyes on the blistering heat, a dry heat, but quite tolerable in the shade of the tree. She was still, sequestered from the chattering crowds, locked in with the strange hand on her sticks, thé stranger’s voice probing for hidden fears, feeling oddly young, as if someone had guessed what she wanted for Christmas thereby saving her the burden of revelation.
The minutes passed along with the crowd; she sat so still and soon the heat ceased its burning and instead leaned into her skin like a huge feather cushion. She heard crows croaking, the carolling of magpies, the distant cry of sheep, otherwise a silence as thick as the heat. And then someone approached, and in the split second it took to open her eyes she thought, hoped, Ben had returned. But it was Scott.
Ginnie had expected to see him, had played through the meeting a hundred times, and yet now he was here less than a metre away, she couldn’t be bothered with him. She could smell him, sour and sweaty with alcohol and heat, and his blondness seemed insipid after Ben’s rich complexion.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me to join you?’ he asked.
‘No, I wasn’t.’
Her reply caught him on his knees. For a moment he was unable to move, just a few fumbled words terminating in a perplexed ‘Oh?’ She ignored the question, sat looking at him with a calm and gentle smile on her face. He clambered to his feet, couldn’t hold her gaze, looked instead to the lake, the trees, the distant buildings, fleetingly to her upturned face. An ant crawled over her knee, she brushed it off carefully, watched i
t dart away, returned her gaze to Scott.
‘You’re mad at me?’ he asked.
‘What for?’
Another long pause. Ah, the power of meeting a question with a question, she thought. Her smile broadened.
‘I don’t know what’s so funny,’ he said.
‘And neither you should, it’s a private joke.’
‘You’re mad at me, I know you are.’
‘How do you know that?’
Silence. A long silence.
‘You seem to be having difficulty with my questions,’ Ginnie said.
‘Only because you’re not playing fairly.’
She bent her head to one side and spoke very slowly. ‘Oh? Not playing fairly, am I?’
His gaze was darting all over the place like a hunted ant. Ginnie watched him and decided she would prefer to be alone.
‘Haven’t you something better to do?’ She gave him time to answer and when he didn’t, she continued, ‘Because I have.’
Scott frowned, the muscles in his jaw flickered, he didn’t know what was happening. Then something occurred to him, his face relaxed, and a little sheepishly he asked whether he might accompany her.
‘No, Scott, you misunderstand. I’m not going anywhere, at least not for the moment.’
‘Are you meeting someone?’
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
‘It’s not difficult to understand, I prefer my own company to yours.’
That he looked shocked rather than hurt or angry betrayed him. He tried to speak, gave up, walked away. A moment later he stopped, turned around, and in a voice dank with malice called her a smug bitch and a man-hater. ‘Just like your mother.’
Like her mother indeed, she thought, her eyes again closed and pleasure in her soul.
By four-thirty few people remained outdoors. As the temperature climbed – and it did with an insolence typical of the Australian sun – the outdoor attractions reclaimed a certain peace; the crocodiles floated as calmly as logs, wallabies bounced around unimpeded by chattering tourists, the bowling green, the tennis courts, the lake, the fairways all were deserted. And the sun blazed, capturing the vast spaces, the young grass, the buildings, the gleaming paths in its shimmering gaze.
The people were indoors, thousands of them filling club houses, lobbies, shops, gymnasiums, indoor sports arenas; cool spaces crammed with people passing time with friends and strangers and copious amounts of alcohol – Eden Park Flyers served by the jug, champagne too. Here was the mood of Eden Park that Lydia had first proposed all those years ago, a shower of excess, of recklessness and frivolity. And yet there was a studied air in all the abandon, something utterly contrived in the group of young men, shirts removed, performing on the gymnasium equipment to the delighted clapping of the crowd; or over in one of the club rooms, another group, older this time, seizing a microphone and launching into a medley of Beatles songs; something peculiarly calculated in the hordes of scantily-clad people cavorting in the indoor fountains, shrill voices merging with crashing water: so much noise and yet everyone managed to be heard.
‘But very little to say.’
It was Kate who had spoken. She was standing with Vivienne and Elizabeth on a ninth-floor balcony overlooking the atrium at Eden Park Lodge. They had, quite by accident, found each other in the piazza outside the building; Elizabeth and Vivienne had just strolled over from the coffee lounge and Kate had come from the party at the bird pavilion. They parted the ropes of drooping ivy and leaned over to take in the view below.
‘If you look, not quite at them, more into the middle distance, they look like millions of colourful jiggling lollies.’
Both Elizabeth and Vivienne turned to Kate: something more than a glance in the middle distance was required for such an effect, they said.
Kate shrugged. ‘Don’t blame me for your lack of imagination,’ and then laughed and linked arms with them. They stood and watched the show below.
‘I wonder if it would have been different with a cooler day,’ Elizabeth said.
‘I don’t imagine so.’ Kate clasped a hand to her head in mock exhaustion. ‘I think there are fairly routine ways of having fun, irrespective of the weather.’
‘And have you?’ Vivienne asked, unable to contain herself. ‘Have you had fun?’
Kate nodded, she supposed so – although she rather suspected that fun was more entertaining in the abstract: one always was a trifle disappointed.
Vivienne smiled. ‘But still you persist.’
‘Of course! Can’t give up.’
‘Even when reason suggests otherwise?’
‘Even then, Vivienne, even then.’ Kate nudged her old friend to acknowledge they had reached a well-travelled impasse, to continue would only aggravate them both.
Elizabeth waited for the moment to pass and pointed to the area around the elevators. ‘There,’ she said, ‘look what’s happening down there.’
The huge water obelisks were shrinking, and a minute later, the water had stopped altogether. Workmen were struggling to clear a path through the crowd from the edge of the atrium to the centre. They were not succeeding and after a short time gave up. The crowd thickened, now even the waiters couldn’t get through. People clambered on chairs to shout out their drink orders, others scaled the potted palms or were hoisted on to the shoulders of friends; money and jugs of Eden Park Flyers passed in opposite directions across the top of the crowd. The balconies were filling too; glasses and jugs and elbows crushed the ivy as people jostled for a better view. On a first-floor balcony two of the workmen elbowed their way to the front. They cast a wide streamer in the ubiquitous purple and silver from the balcony to the elevator area in the centre of the atrium; there it was caught by another workman who attached it to a palm. A voice was heard over a loudspeaker: would all people congregated in the area below the streamer please move either to the left or right to allow preparations for the opening ceremony to proceed. Immediately, the floor of the atrium was transformed into a sheet of upturned faces. Kate burst out laughing.
‘What precision!’ she said. And then with the parting of the ways beneath the streamer added, ‘And what obedience.’
The three of them watched as workmen carried in scaffolding and trestles. Within ten minutes, a circular platform appeared in the area around the elevators where the water obelisks had been. Strips of purple carpet were rolled out, a rostrum decorated with deep purple bougainvillaea was placed at the centre and about a hundred chairs were arranged in neat semi-circular rows.
‘For us, do you think?’ Elizabeth asked pointing to the chairs.
Vivienne grimaced. ‘I fear so.’ She turned to Elizabeth. ‘I couldn’t sit down there, simply couldn’t manage it. Do you mind?’
Elizabeth shook her head, of course she didn’t, she and Kate would be fine alone, and Ginnie too if they could only find her.
‘There she is!’ Kate was pointing towards the main entrance.
Within a few minutes Ginnie had made her way to the platform, where she stood gazing up at the balconies.
Kate and Elizabeth waved, Ginnie saw them, indicated her watch and pointed to the chairs that were rapidly being claimed; it was time to descend. They arranged to meet Vivienne back at the car when it was all over.
A short time later Vivienne saw Elizabeth and Kate emerge from the elevator and join Ginnie on the platform; a guide directed them to their seats. As for Vivienne, she found a chair, dragged it to the balcony and settled back. The floor of the atrium was a shambles of foliage and waving arms, of bodies slapped one against the other. Kate was right about the jiggling, there seemed to be a vibration that seeped through the entire crowd, covering the floor and rising up the walls as people filled the lower balconies. Beyond the fifth floor the crowds began to loosen, too far from the alcohol, Vivienne decided, the seventh floor was occupied almost entirely by film crews and equipment; up on the ninth floor Vivienne was alone.
A gong sounded, a huge coppery blast that l
ingered high in the atrium, and then another and another. Five gongs to sound the hour, and then a man appeared at the rostrum and asked for silence. He welcomed everyone to Eden Park, not only those standing before him but all the others, some twenty thousand of them, who, from the various club houses and gymnasiums and restaurants of Eden Park, were watching the events via closed- circuit television. And there was a special welcome to the people of Australia who, through the courtesy of Channel 5 were part of this unique occasion.
‘And now we’re about to begin.’ He paused for a drum roll and then spread his arms towards the crowd, ‘Eden Park is your place and we at Eden Park love you, each and every one of you.’
Cheers and applause went up from the crowd and the orchestra that had assembled in front of the stage launched into a march which somehow oozed into ‘The Impossible Dream’; soon the crowd was singing along. Vivienne stared down horrified, but fascinated too. Then Ginnie was beside her, she’d slipped away, found a back lift, couldn’t stay down there.
‘I felt like I’d been shut in with thousands of revivalists. My mother and Kate have a happy knack of being able to sit in the middle of it all and not be part of it, I can’t. Just take a look at them.’
Kate was standing in front of her seat conducting the singers with huge theatrical sweeps of an imaginary baton; Elizabeth was doubled over with laughter. The rest of the people on the platform displayed a decorum suitable for special guests on show for a special occasion.
‘I see what you mean.’ Vivienne made room on her chair for Ginnie and they watched together.
The show was about to begin. The orchestra had finished with ‘The Impossible Dream’ and was maintaining an innocuous tune, almost a single note, poised to launch into whatever majestic melody Adrian had chosen for his entrance. Lydia was seated alongside David in the front row, the Warbys were seated more to the rear, and next to Elizabeth were Adrian’s parents. The remainder of the special guests comprised politicians, industrialists, performers – nearly everyone had a familiar face – all displaying the nonchalance of the famous on show.
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