Hard Word

by John Clanchy

  ‘Still she signed it.’

  ‘In the end she did. But, Philip, it’s all got so mean, so niggardly. And then, on the other hand, you get these women who don’t stop to think, who just say: ‘‘You help us, why not we help you.’’ I’m going to miss them so much.’

  ‘Miss them?’

  ‘There’s only another six weeks of term to go. And for them, that’s it. Come June 6, they’re out. They’re deemed to be functioning. They’ve had the English to which they’re entitled. So they can toddle off back home. And shut the door.’

  ‘Well, at least they’ve got some contacts now.’

  ‘That’s something, I suppose,’ Miriam says. And then walks away to the oven. Her back is to me when she says:

  ‘You know, Philip, I’ve been thinking …’

  ‘Oh?’ I listen hard for this.

  ‘After these next six weeks, I might take a break?’

  ‘From teaching? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘From the college anyway. But, yes, even do something different for a bit. While I think.’

  ‘More thinking?’ I say, and move across to her. ‘That could be dangerous.’

  ‘I don’t know what yet,’ she says. And, from behind, I put my arms around her. She leans back against me. At this moment we’re very close.

  ‘You mean you’re not ready to tell me yet.’

  ‘I’m not sure myself.’

  ‘But you will warn me?’ I say then, and she turns and kisses me.

  ‘Philip, I love you very much,’ she says. ‘We’re all right, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and kiss her back. ‘Yes.’

  And mean it. And don’t for one moment regret passing up the offer that came out of the blue in Melbourne.

  ‘So, what’s happened here?’ I say, unbuttoning the top button of Miriam’s blouse and kissing the white swell of her breast. ‘While I’ve been away at the salt mines …’

  It’s still early, and we’re sitting on the bed in our room, waiting for the house to settle. One of the girls is moving about upstairs, maybe dancing. There’s music thumping – metal – it’s Laura, but Mother’s flat is silent. Miriam’s dosed her, twice for luck, hoping to get us through the night undisturbed for a change.

  ‘Only one mini-crisis,’ Miriam replies. ‘Katie and Penny – you know, the red-haired little madam from down the street? – they changed all the signs on Mother’s rooms.’

  ‘They what?’

  ‘Yes, I know it’s funny now, but at the time –’

  ‘And the counsellor? Did you …’

  ‘Jane. She was very nice.’

  ‘Plain Jane.’

  ‘Not entirely. In fact you’re not going to get to see her.’

  ‘Oh? That sounds interesting,’ I say. I love being back with Miriam like this, relaxed with each other, bantering but moving all the time, along parallel tracks, towards something more electric. My hand has moved now inside her skirt. And what,’ I say, ‘did she decide about you? Father-fixated? Maternally deprived?’

  ‘Normal.’

  ‘She says you’re normal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re going to see her again?’

  ‘She’s very nice. And sharp. Philip, you do think I’m doing the right thing, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘just keep moving your hips like that.’

  ‘I mean about Mother. You do think … ?’

  ‘Darling, we’ve been through this. She’s your mother. It’s your decision, and I’ll support you whatever you do. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘I’d like to know what you really think.’

  ‘Sweetheart, I’m not going to get caught in that. What if I were to say that, on balance, given the stresses on her, on you, on the girls, I think she should be in a home, so long as we did it on a trial basis and we found she could stand it …’

  ‘So you do think –?’

  ‘Darling, listen to what I’m saying. What if I said that, and then three months from now, six, a year, two years, she dies …’

  ‘Two years? Could she last that long?’

  ‘And then you get a fit of the Elektras, and you believe you’ve done the wrong thing. Isn’t it likely you’d also begin to blame me, and where would we be then?’

  ‘You’re afraid I might blame you.’

  ‘I’m afraid about what might happen to us.’

  Miriam lies, moving gently, unconsciously, under my hand, while she thinks about this. I know what she’s thinking. She’s thinking that all this isn’t very courageous of me, that it’s a bit wimpish. I know she’s thinking this because I know Miriam, and also because it’s what I’m thinking about myself. But I can’t see my way out of this fix. And getting any closer to it all is too hard, too messy. I’ve got to leave it to her. When she speaks again, we’re back where we were, before Mother intruded. Whether Miriam’s decided something or not, I can’t tell. But she’s recaptured her playfulness. She rolls towards me and undoes the buckle on my belt.

  ‘And what about you?’ she says. ‘What did you get up to in Melbourne?’

  ‘I can’t hear anyone now,’ I say, reaching for her. The noises of the house seem to have retreated. Even Laura’s metal seems to have transmuted into velvet.

  ‘No, wait a minute,’ Miriam says, rolling back from me. ‘I want to know. About Melbourne.’

  ‘I did meet this gorgeous floozy,’ I say. ‘Unfortunately she was acting for the prosecution.’

  ‘Phil-ip,’ Miriam says.

  ‘Come here,’ I say and ease the blouse down over her white shoulders. Miriam’s body is so beautiful.

  ‘Do you still love me?’ she says, shrugging off her skirt.

  ‘This book,’ I say. ‘I was reading it on the plane. The latest Updike. Bech at Bay, or something.’

  ‘You want to discuss books?’ she says, shucking off her bra. She’s naked now and, I see, already very aroused.

  ‘The character’s describing a legal case he’s just been in, and the lawyer woman who’s been defending him –’

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me about Melbourne?’

  ‘They’re in bed,’ I say, ‘and he touches – like this – the tip of her breast and says it’s like a sun-darkened apricot. And I sat in the plane and thought about that, and thought that’s rather strange. It’s not the way I would have … But now, like this, it does suddenly rather look –’

  ‘An apricot? Not grapes?’

  ‘Grapes?’

  ‘This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes …’

  ‘I know that, don’t I?’ I say.

  ‘You ought to. It’s Solomon. The Song of Songs.

  ‘The only bit I remember is: Your breath sweet-scented as apples …’

  ‘That’s the Jerusalem,’ she says. ‘Not the King James.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask her. I’m obsessive, I have to know about such things. Texts, evidence, authorities. Even now, at a moment like this, when my own stature – also like to a palm tree, even unto the nuts – makes walking awkward. There is a shelf of favourite books at the end of our bed.

  ‘Philip – not now,’ Miriam says. ‘Not now, darling. Just believe me. It’s Old Testament, remember?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Here,’ she says. She stretches her arms out in front of her, towards me. ‘Breast now, book later. Please?’

  I enter her almost immediately, and am amazed at her heat and wetness.

  ‘Men are such fools,’ she says, and laughs to herself. ‘Their dicks get in the way,’ she says as though she’s quoting again.

  ‘Is that what the counsellor told you?’ I say.

  ‘Oh, not yours, darling,’ she says, and her heels are hard and urgent all of a sudden against my buttocks. ‘Yours can go all the way.’

  ‘Like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  At one point her hands reach out to cradle my hips.

  ‘You kno
w it’s crazy. Men are such fools,’ she says again. Though what she says next seems to hit her with just as great a sense of shock as it does me. ‘But, oh Philip,’ she gasps, ‘I do want a son.’

  ‘You, what?’ I say. Amazed that she can still be thinking of this. Now, in the midst of everything else that’s going on.

  ‘How can you explain that?’ she says.

  ‘I can’t. Not right now, anyway.’

  ‘Go on. Tr-yyyy,’ she says. Arching her back ever so slowly.

  ‘Perversity?’ Is the best I can manage. ‘The unfathomable female mind?’ I say. As I plunge. Into hers.

  ‘Oh, Philip –’ she says, her hips rising and then slapping quickly, flatly against mine. ‘Philip …. ?’ she says again. Pleading. For a son? While the thought goes – indeed all thought goes – as I thrust back against her.

  ‘Miriam,’ I say, as I enter the last, irresistible, unstoppable channel –

  Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

  ‘Oh no,’ Miriam says. ‘No.’

  Beep-beep.

  ‘Ignore it,’ she says. ‘Keep going. Don’t stop now. Philip, don’t stop –’

  Beep-beep, Beep-beep.

  I become aware of something odd, something wrong, something really strange, and then I realize … The alarm – the magic eye – it’s not just sounding, it’s actually keeping time with us. And I sense through the thick thermometer of flesh that is about to explode inside Miriam’s suddenly cooling body, that she’s become aware of this too.

  Beep-beep, Beep-beep.

  ‘How does she know?’ Miriam says. ‘How does she do it?’

  Beep. Beep-be-b-beep …

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s changed the rhythm.’

  ‘Darling –’ she says.

  ‘I’ve lost my stroke.’

  Beep-be-beep-beepedy-beep.

  ‘Sweetheart?’ I say. ‘Miriam?’

  ‘What?’ she says, her voice falling.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  Beep-beep, beepedy-beep-beep …?

  Laura

  You do something really simple, something people normally wouldn’t even notice, like you do your hair in a different way, up instead of down or over your forehead in a fringe like Toni does hers now, so she looks like an orang-utan in a fernery, and everyone thinks you’re someone else all of a sudden. Like you’ve had a total head transplant or something, or a personality by-pass. And they start calling you a young woman, or stuck up, or maturrre – And you start to wish you’d never done it in the first place, but it’s too late to change it now because everyone will just think you’ve backed down.

  And anyway I kind of like it, all the fuss it makes, and the notice and attention you get. It’s crazy really, if you ever stopped to think about it. And I do sometimes – think about all this stuff, I mean – but I never seem to get anywhere because everything’s so complicated and as soon as you start to think about one thing it turns into something else, and you realize everything is connected to every other thing, and you end up going in circles.

  And blah.

  Like this argument I was having with Mum about Philip (that’s the other Philip, not Mum’s Philip) only it turned out not to be an argument at all when I looked at my Communication book but a Negotiation among intimates, which is Mum and me.

  It all started because Philip Davies – he’s the school captain – was waiting outside our room when we came out from English this morning, and I already knew he was there because Toni had seen him through the window and kept sending me notes, but I couldn’t look because I knew he was waiting for me, and I missed all the questions Miss Temple was giving us to think about for the next class. I couldn’t write anything, but I wasn’t going to let Toni see that so I just wrote scribble scribble, and now I’ll have to ring her at home and tell her I’ve lost the page and can she read out the questions again.

  When we came out of class, I was nearly the last to leave, trying to push out in a bunch of other girls, and Toni, of course, was right on my heels and hanging onto the sleeve of my blouse. I couldn’t just walk past Philip, though. It would have been rude, especially when he was looking a bit red and embarrassed anyway, just standing there with all the girls sidling past and pushing out their boobs between him and the lockers and then looking back and going OO-ooha in that immature way. So I stopped and Toni nearly knocked me over, running straight into the back of me.

  Though in fact it’s Philip not Toni who actually says:

  ‘Laura – I was hoping to run into you …’

  I make space, then, for Toni to go past but she doesn’t move, of course. She just stands there with her head perched on my shoulder like she’s a parrot and I’m Long John Silver or something. And poor Philip’s going redder and redder, and it really shows because he’s blond and has this very fair skin where I’m like an Aborigine, and I blush a lot too but it’s harder to see it.

  ‘I … uh …’ he says. ‘I was just … wondering …’

  And I know he’s going to ask me out and inside my head I’m going, What am I going to say? What am I going to say? and I’m not even listening to him, and all I hear is ‘. seen Shakespeare in Love?’ and Toni does one of her stupid laughs and says:

  ‘Seen Shakespeare in love? We haven’t even seen him with his pants off yet!’

  And of course poor Philip goes even redder then, and I think this is really unfair, and I’ve never done this before, but I turn to her and say, ‘Toni, stop being so childish. Will you please go away, and let Philip and me talk?’

  And her mouth falls open, and she doesn’t even say Well,, pardon me or anything, but just leaves, looking back over her shoulder with her mouth open like she’s been stung with one of those electric cattle prods. And I can still hear my own voice in my head, and I know where all that comes from – and I think how much I admire my Mum.

  Which is where I got the idea to put my hair up in the first place, of course, because when we came back from Greece and we had to go and see Grandma Vera every weekend, Mum always put her hair up, like she was going into battle or something, and I always loved her the most then because she was upset and her eyes were blazing and the bones in her face really stood out, and I thought she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.

  But now Toni’s gone and this Philip, my Philip, starts to relax a bit, and I find, after thinking about Mum like that, I’m not nervous or anything after all, and I’m saying to him as cool as anything, as if I’m the one asking him out when I’m presuming – but I’m not absolutely sure – he’s just asked me.

  ‘So, would you like to go and see it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, on Friday, if that suits you, Laura.’

  ‘Friday,’ I say slowly as if I’m thinking hard, but in fact my brain’s starting to go blank again. He’s got these very blue eyes and his hair’s blond but it’s got these fawn or tawny streaks in it, and they’re natural, they’re not dyed or anything, and I’m trying to think, Friday, Friday, but I’m actually wondering how his hair will change colour later – maybe the fawn streaks will go grey earlier or maybe the blond will and the fawn will be left and what will that look like then, and Friday’s after Thursday I finally work out, and say, ‘Yes, that’d be fine, what time?’

  And he says it starts at eight, so why didn’t we meet at quarter to? But where? It’s only down at the Mall and I could walk but I know Mum will insist that she meets him first, so I’m about to say why don’t you come to my house and we can go from there, when I remember what happened at my party. So, we agree to meet at the Mall at quarter to, and I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to Mum, and already I know I’ve done the wrong thing and there’ll be an argument, but I can’t help it.

  ‘Fine,’ he says, ‘I’ll meet you by the Post Office clock at quarter to. I’m really looking forward to it, Laura,’ he says.

  And he doesn’t know how to finish our discourse, and almost goes to shake hands an
d I realize then he’s as shy as I am – and I like that – and in the end he doesn’t say anything but just hurries away past Toni who’s still hanging about at the end of our row of lockers.

  ‘He asked you out,’ she says when I get there. Only she says it like an accusation. Like someone’s just committed a murder or something. ‘Didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He did.’ And I open my locker and look into it and not at her, and I try and sound casual as anything. ‘We’ll probably go and see Shakespeare in Love,’ I say, as though we hadn’t already arranged all the times and everything, and it was just one of the options we were still considering. And I don’t really want to talk to her, I’d much rather be talking to Mum, because in a minute when Toni gets over her upset, she’ll be asking, ‘And what about afterwards?’, and I’ve been thinking about that too and I don’t know, and that’s just one reason I’d much rather be talking to Mum than Toni.

  ‘Of course you can go, ’ Mum says. ‘I’ve heard it’s fun. I only wish I’d seen it myself.’

  ‘Then you don’t mind?’

  ‘Darling, I’m delighted for you. And I’ll be very pleased to meet Philip, and I promise I won’t embarrass you in front of him. I’m prejudiced in favour of all Philips, you know that.’

  There’s silence for a moment then. I don’t know what to say. But with Mum you don’t have to. She’s very smart about silence. Sometimes with Mum, if you’ve got something to hide, it’s better to keep talking because she hears silence even better than she hears words.

  ‘Why?’ she says, when I haven’t said anything back to her. ‘Is something wrong? Laura? Have I missed something?’

  ‘Well, we were thinking of meeting at the Mall.’

  ‘That’s okay, darling. It’s five minutes walk from here. You can go down there as soon as I’ve met Philip.’ She doesn’t say if I meet Philip, I notice, but when I meet Philip. Like after I’ve met him.

  ‘But why?’ I say. ‘Why do you need to meet him?’

  ‘Because,’ she says, ‘he’s going out with my daughter who’s just turned fifteen and is on her first –’