Autumn Laing

by Alex Miller

  ‘Well, I’m a bit afraid of you,’ he said.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Just a bit. Don’t get carried away.’

  ‘Come on!’ She reached for his hand.

  He got up from the bench but he did not take her hand. ‘I’m going to look for Edith.’

  They stood a little apart, uncertain. Neither quite able to decide to end this nor quite wishing to prolong it any further, but held by their uncertainty about what ‘this’ was exactly, or was to become, if it was to become anything.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’d better go and find her. Barnaby said she went down to the river.’

  But still they stood, not leaving.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I believe in you.’ She said this strongly, needing a response to it from him. It was important for her to say it.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Does my belief mean anything to you?’

  ‘It helps,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why it helps, but it does. It’s why I came.’

  ‘I’m glad you came.’

  ‘I probably am too.’

  They both smiled. And each of them wondered why they felt there was something sad in this. Their smiles an admission, it seemed to them, of something a little hot, of something to be regretted. Was that it? An expectation, or a fear, of some undisclosed element of this they would rather not have encountered?

  He went down towards the river to look for Edith.

  Autumn walked back to the house on her own.

  The moment he was away from her Pat thought of things he might have said to Autumn and he determined to say them to her the next time they were alone. The taste of her was on his lips, her mouth, her breath, tainted with tobacco and wine, and something that was her alone. He rubbed his lips with his fingers and spat. Going to find Edith he struggled with the guilt of his betrayal and hoped she would not see it in his eyes. Edith always looked deeply into his eyes. Would he be able to deceive her?

  He found her sitting on a log by the water, her back to him. She was alone. The most intensely familiar figure in his life. He would have known the back of her head from a hundred miles away. A thousand. She was Edith and could be no one else. He could have wept for her and for himself and for their child. He was overcome with dismay.

  She turned around and smiled at him. ‘I knew you’d come to find me.’ She held out her hands to him. ‘Isn’t it beautiful here? I just saw a yellow robin. We’re so lucky.’

  He took her hands in his and lifted her up and held her in his arms.

  ‘You’re crying!’ she said, astonished.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What is it? Tell me, darling.’ She leaned away, anxious to see him. ‘You must tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Nothing. Everything.’

  ‘You’re so silly.’ She pulled his head onto her shoulder. ‘There. Cry if you want. You gave me such a fright.’ She held him close against her. ‘Sometimes I want to be your mother. Do you mind me feeling like that?’ She stroked his hair and looked beyond him across the river to the forest of gum trees where she had seen the yellow robin a moment before he came to find her. ‘You are such a silly,’ she said again, and she smiled to think of his distress and that it was she who comforted him.

  The four of them were in the library. It was after one in the morning. Barnaby, the last of the others, had left a few minutes before, hallooing and sounding his horn as he drove out the gate. Arthur was standing with his back to the dead hearth. He was looking at Edith. He turned to the mantelpiece and picked up his glass of whisky and took a drink, then placed the glass back on the mantelpiece. Edith was asleep on the couch to the left of the fireplace, her legs tucked under her, her head resting on the arm of the couch where Pat had slept with Autumn’s shawl over his shoulders. It was a warm night and the windows were open. Purple shadows rimmed Arthur’s eyes. He looked middle-aged and tired. His cheeks were dark with the day’s stubble. He was saying something that no one was listening to. He gave a soft belch, for which he murmured an apology. He would have liked to bring up the matter of Edith’s painting but he knew he would never mention it. He was daydreaming how simple it would be to go and retrieve it from the loft and put it on the mantelpiece in place of Roy’s abstract. When she woke she would see it there and he would witness the pleasure in her lovely eyes. He was very fond of Edith. He was not sure if he could detect a sign of her pregnancy or not. She had a much healthier colour than when they’d seen her at Ocean Grove. He had noticed that she had been happy all day. Her happiness had reassured him and made him feel less guilty about her painting. It was nice that she had become friends with Barnaby. Barnaby was one of the people Arthur liked best in the world. A truly trusted friend. He realised he had said something aloud and he looked at Autumn as if expecting a response.

  Autumn was sitting beside Pat on the couch across from Edith. She had been selecting passages from Wilde’s The Critic as Artist and reading them to him. The book lay face down in her lap. She looked up at Arthur when he spoke and said, ‘I’m going to take Pat down to the river to see the moon.’

  Arthur reached for his drink and waved his hand in a generalised gesture at the room. A slop of whisky lipped his glass and landed on the skirt of Autumn’s dress. His gaze fixed on the small stain. ‘Go on,’ he urged them. And, as if Pat was not present with them in the room, he added, ‘He should see the river by moonlight. It’s a painting. A David Davies nocturne. The Yarra by Moonlight. Or it ought to be if it’s not. Go on, if you’re going. I’ll finish this and turn in.’ He looked down at Edith. ‘I shan’t wake her. She’s sleeping the sleep of the just.’

  Edith sat up slowly and looked at them. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I think I went to sleep.’ She looked across at Pat. ‘I’ll have to go to bed, darling.’

  Pat said, ‘Autumn’s just suggested we go and have a look at the river by moonlight. Why don’t you come with us? The fresh air will wake you up.’

  ‘Can’t you do that in the morning?’ Edith realised what she had said and laughed. She struggled to her feet. ‘Sorry. I think I’m still asleep.’ She stepped around the low table between the couches.

  Pat stood up and she put a hand to his arm and kissed his cheek, reclaiming him from the doubts of her solitary sleep. She said something to him then turned to the others. ‘Goodnight. Thank you both. It was a lovely day. I saw a yellow robin by the river. Did Pat tell you? I’ll see you in the morning.’ She went to the door, turned and raised her hand and smiled at them, and went out.

  A moment later they heard the door of the guest room close.

  Pat was still standing beside the couch.

  Arthur spoke into the silence, his voice tempered to the rhythm of the poem, ‘Where has Maid Quiet gone to, nodding her russet hood? The winds that awakened the stars are blowing through my blood.’ He looked at Autumn.

  Autumn said, ‘And the rest?’

  Arthur made an impatient gesture. ‘It’s gone from me for the moment.’

  She kept her gaze on him until he looked at her again.

  ‘Has it?’ she said when their eyes met.

  ‘Yes, darling, it has. Now why don’t you take Pat to see the moon on the river if that’s your intention.’ His tone was just a little severe, just a little reprimanding or impatient. He lit a cigarette and frowned. He looked up and realised they had gone. Perhaps she had spoken to him on the way out.

  He reached for his drink and sat on the couch where Edith had been sleeping. His gaze rested on the bottle on the table. He would climb up into the loft in the morning and get her painting and speak to her about it. He drank some whisky. He should go to bed. He sat staring at the bottle. He was not sure if everything was all right or not. It was just as well no one had wanted to finance the Flinders Lane gallery idea. They hadn’t really worked out what it was they wanted to do. They would have been left with it. Autumn’s idea of a one-off show was a much bett
er way to make a start. He realised his eyes had closed and he opened them wide and breathed deeply. There were sounds out in the bush. Little howls and yelps and the whip of a bird woken by the brightness of the moon. Perhaps their cock would crow. What had she meant when she screamed at him that he had always denied her the important things in life? Had he? He recalled fending off her blows with a feeling of sickness in his stomach. They couldn’t talk about it. Something stirred in the garden beyond the window and he turned to look. The moon was big and cold and distant and alone and very beautiful. A possum.

  Autumn was lying on her side on the grass on the low flat bank of the river, her dress under her. She was naked, her body shining with the river water. Pat stood above her, his own nakedness dappled by the moonshadow through the silver wattles.

  She said, ‘Lie with me for a little while longer.’

  ‘And suppose Arthur decides to come down after all?’ he said.

  ‘He won’t.’ She held her arms up to him. ‘Please, don’t just leave me like this. I feel empty. I need you to hold me.’ I am pleading with him, she thought. He will despise me.

  Pat looked up the hill towards the house. He reached for his underpants and pulled them on.

  She sat up on her elbow, her dress rumpled under her where she had laid it out for them. ‘You’re not attractive when you’re afraid.’

  ‘I’m just being sensible.’ He dragged his shorts on over his damp underpants.

  ‘You weren’t being sensible just now.’

  He said, ‘Get dressed!’

  ‘No. Give me a cigarette.’

  ‘Not until you get dressed.’

  ‘I’ll get dressed if you give me a cigarette.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you,’ he said. ‘Arthur probably doesn’t mind. But this would finish Edith if she knew about it. It would destroy her.’

  ‘Then why did you do it? You’re a swine, Pat Donlon. It would kill my Arthur to know of this.’

  A vixen barked across the river. Pat stood transfixed, staring in the direction of the deranged cry. ‘Christ! What the fuck was that?’

  ‘A girl fox. You are so panicky. I don’t like it. You are spoiling everything. This is a sacred grove for me.’

  ‘Who else have you brought here?’

  ‘I loathe and detest you! You are the only man I have ever brought here.’

  He lit a cigarette, drew on it, then handed it to her.

  She took the cigarette from him and smoked, leaning on her elbow like an odalisque, her body polished marble. ‘And how many women have you had since you married Edith?’

  ‘You’re the first.’

  ‘Why don’t I believe you?’ She thought of him with another woman as he had been with her a moment ago and knew she would kill them both.

  ‘Because you’re a fool.’ He couldn’t see his singlet anywhere and wondered what he had done with it. He sat on the log and looked at her. He was astonished by the refinement of her beauty in the moonlight. He couldn’t believe he had just made love to her. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise.’ A twig snapped among the wattles behind him and he whirled around. The moon shone clear and white among the polished trunks of the spindly trees. A moth flew into the light, fluttering like a white ghost across the open space, then suddenly disappeared into the darkness. He was afraid Arthur or Edith had heard Autumn crying out at the height of it. He had never heard a woman make such a racket. Was it anguish or pleasure she had been feeling?

  ‘You’re a scaredy-cat,’ she said. She lay there, languid, deeply relaxed, the warm night air on her skin. She caressed her flank. She was still drunk and too relaxed to care about anything. ‘I’m surprised you’re so fearful,’ she said. ‘I’d imagined you being fearless.’

  ‘Men being fearless is bullshit.’

  ‘I like to believe good men are fearless in defence of what they cherish.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what they’d like you to believe. Only they’re not. Look around you. See what men do. Anyway, I’m not a good man. And you’re not a good woman.’ His brain was infested with small black figures leaping and running about in the eerie darkness, climbing over each other. An insane directionless panic of small black flies with grey markings on their backs. His head was thumping. The pump had started up. He supposed he would soon die and it would be over for him. Poor Edith, walking the streets of St Kilda with their little child. What would she tell the child about its father? … Sitting on the log looking at this goddess in the moonlight, he knew he would not be able to refuse her. The only way for him and Edith to survive this would be for them to go away without telling anyone where they were going. To England. And if they couldn’t raise the money for England, then to New Zealand. Somewhere deep in the South Island among the Maori. Out of Autumn’s reach. Eventually he would forget her. She was watching him. He knew he would never forget her.

  His admiration made her feel young and reckless. ‘I want you again,’ she said.

  He stood up. ‘Jesus! I’m going up to the house.’

  She sat up. ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘No!’ she shouted.

  He turned on her. ‘Be quiet, for Christ’s sake!’ He was beginning to fear that she wanted them to be caught. ‘You’re mad,’ he said. ‘You like to make a scene.’

  ‘Yes, like you.’

  ‘No, you’re dangerous. I’m going back.’

  She jumped to her feet and caught him in a stride and held his arm, her nails digging into his flesh. ‘Wait, or I’ll scream and everyone will know.’

  ‘Yeah, I can believe you would do that.’ Even as he looked at her, knowing he would not be able to resist her, his stomach was churning with fear and remorse and the desire to be innocently with Edith again. ‘Okay,’ he said, his voice unsteady, missing a beat as if someone had jogged the gramophone needle. It was true, he was a scaredy-cat. ‘I’ll wait while you get dressed.’

  ‘No one,’ she said, holding his arm, ‘has ever made love to me like that.’ But she was thinking of the Roman psychiatrist. It was him she had thought of when Pat was making love to her just now. He had been forty and married and she was barely nineteen. Surely it had been like this with him? The fear and the excitement, the knowledge that they would make love no matter what the consequences, no matter what the cost to them. Life itself. She couldn’t remember his name. She remembered his child. Her lost child. The child would have been sixteen this year. She longed suddenly to sit quietly by the river with Pat now and tell him everything that had ever meant anything to her, so that he would know her and understand her and no longer be a stranger to her.

  ‘This was a one-off,’ Pat said. His tone was harsh. ‘I shouldn’t have given in to you.’

  ‘You bastard! It was you who seduced me.’

  ‘You insisted on swimming naked in front of me. What was that supposed to be?’

  She said helplessly, ‘Oh, I hate you.’ She kissed him on the mouth, pressing herself against him, thinking of him holding her to him in the river. He began to caress her and she pulled away from him and laughed. ‘You’ll have to wait.’ She went over to where her dress was lying on the grass and put on her pants and bra. She held up her stained and crumpled dress. She put it on over her head and dragged it down. ‘Arthur will know at once.’ She looked at Pat. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Can’t you say you fell in? Or you swam in your clothes?’

  She said, ‘Look,’ and pointed through the tall gum trees on the far bank of the river behind him. ‘It’s starting to get light.’

  She looked like a girl standing there in the faint dawnlight, her hair in wet braids, her feet bare, her dress like the dress of a gipsy or a peasant.

  ‘You look innocent,’ he said. ‘Like a girl.’

  Edith opened her eyes. Moonlight, she supposed it to be, was showing in a strip around the curtains. She thought she was at home in their bed in Ocean Grove. Then she remembered. Something had wok
en her. Had someone called to her? Then she heard it again. A man’s laughter followed by talking. She realised Pat was not beside her. She switched on the bedside light and looked at her watch. It was a quarter past four. She got up and put on her dressing-gown and slippers and went out along the passage to the library. She stood outside the door. A man’s voice. It was Arthur. She opened the door and went in. Arthur was standing with his back to her in front of the fireplace and seemed to be addressing the large abstract painting that was leaning against the wall on the mantelpiece. His jacket was off and his braces hung over his trousers. ‘Well, dear boy, that’s how things stand here.’

  Edith coughed.

  Arthur fell silent and turned around.

  She said, ‘Where’s Pat?’

  ‘Well, dear girl,’ he said, ‘I thought you would have been well and truly in the land of nod by now. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Where’s Pat?’

  He looked around the room, as if he thought he might see Pat and cry out, Ah, there he is! ‘Won’t you come in properly and sit down?’ he said. ‘I can make us a cup of tea if you’d prefer.’

  ‘I think I’ll go and look for them,’ Edith said.

  ‘Oh, they’ll be all right. I shouldn’t worry.’

  ‘But the moon must have gone down ages ago.’

  ‘The moon?’ he said slowly, as if this were a piece of a puzzle he had been looking for and it had just been handed to him. Now to fit it into its proper place. One problem solved, another confronts us. ‘Look, Edith. Talking. You know.’ He was talking with his hands. ‘I dare say. About life and art. That’s it, isn’t it?’ He grinned at her, but she did not respond. ‘Life and art. You must know what it’s like yourself. Time gets away when we’re talking. We have all our lives. What about that cup of tea? I’ll come with you, if you like, and we’ll look for them together when we’ve had a cup of tea. What do you say to that? Do we have a bargain? I don’t think Autumn will be wildly pleased to find us skulking about in the dark spying on her, but if it will put your mind at rest. Well, no doubt it will be worth it. Aren’t you tired? I am frankly exhausted. No work tomorrow, thank God. God, I hate that place.’ He stood looking at her as if he had only just realised who she was. ‘I have all the courage in the world in theory. In theory I tell my mother I am through with the law and I resign from the firm. It’s simple. Then I visit my mother and she asks me about one of her dear friends who has business with our firm and she wants me to do something to hurry things along. I can do very little. Nothing really. Believe me, it is not humanly possible to hurry the law. This woman, or man, and sometimes it has been a man since my father passed away, is unknown to me except by name. Their affairs are a mystery so far as I am concerned. And, what’s more important, they are not my client but the client of one of the senior partners. So I promise Mother I’ll see what I can do, because I know she has told her friend that her son, the prince—you know what I mean?—has influence at court, if you’ll allow the pun, and is able to fix these things. So it is my mother’s standing with her friend that is at stake. It is this she places in my care. Her standing with her friends. So what can I do if I am not to seem to betray her, but eat my cake and drink my tea and kiss her cheek and give her my worthless word and sneak off like a hyena who has just pinched someone’s lunch? If that makes sense. I’m sure you know what I mean. I am a hypocrite. What would you do?’