The House Within

by Fiona Kidman

  MRS DIXON AND FRIEND

  BETHANY WAS WAITING for him on the side of the street. The unexpectedness of it took Peter’s breath away. He was used to her being late but here she was, bright-eyed and swinging her handbag backwards and forwards, with cheerful disingenuousness, like a girl who knows that if she waits long enough her man will turn up. How right she was, even if he was only her man for a day.

  ‘I thought you’d be waiting inside for me.’

  ‘It’s too early for lunch, and it’s such a beautiful day. I couldn’t resist an extra spot of sun. We’ll only have a few more weeks of it.’

  She was right. It was a crystal-clear, sparkling day, autumn at its best. If he had been at home, the sort of day that he could have looked out and just about seen the Blue Mountains from his office window. He had forgotten they had days like this in New Zealand. So many times when he had been here in recent years, especially in this small town, they had been wintry and dark.

  ‘You’ve cut your hair,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, at last. Well, you know, coming up forty. I thought it was about time.’

  ‘Forty! You.’

  They had started to drift along the street away from the restaurant, without meaning to, but now he stopped in his tracks.

  She laughed. ‘It’s permissible. It happens. It’s happened to you.’

  ‘Years ago.’

  ‘Ah-ha. I know. I thought about you when it happened —’

  ‘You didn’t —’

  ‘Yes I did. I felt very good about it, very malicious, you know?’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘I thought, God, I bet he’s feeling awful.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Oh, you weren’t!’

  ‘I thought that’s what you wanted.’

  ‘Oh, I did too. But don’t you see, it spoils it for me now. Because I don’t mind. Honestly. It seems like quite a fun thing to do.’

  ‘So you got your hair cut, eh? It looks nice. No really, it does. Did I look a bit shocked? I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I’ve never seen you without it before.’

  He wanted to reach out and test the feel of its absence. What was left was smartly styled, its nut-brown texture springy and vital, flecked with grey. He harboured a secret admiration for women who sported their greying hair with casual aplomb. It suggested a daring that was exciting. Still, it was odd coming across it in this woman. But then she had always had the ability to surprise him. Once he had thought her predictable; now he understood that had never been so.

  They were in a shopping mall with seats and spreading trees and a fountain. It looked like any such modern complex, but it was different because, although this was the town he had lived in with Bethany, she had watched its development while he had not. He had gone away because he felt as if nothing would ever change and he was afraid that the sameness would stultify and destroy him. Yet the town had changed and she with it. It was a testimony to something. He told himself sternly that he was being sentimental. Underneath nothing would have changed and he would never fit in.

  ‘Shall we sit and watch the fountain?’ asked Bethany.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ he asked, as he settled beside her.

  ‘Mind?’ Her brow puckered. ‘Oh. You mean about us?’

  ‘Well, I thought —’

  ‘Oh, Peter. Nobody here knows you now. Or if they do, they’ve forgotten we were married. It wouldn’t interest them any more.’ She touched his arm. ‘You shouldn’t mind. It’s what you wanted.’

  Across the mall music boomed suddenly from a record shop, as a customer had a stereo demonstrated to him.

  ‘Whatever happened to the Seekers?’ asked Bethany, listening to the music. ‘I mean, in the end, where did they all go? I remember they came back, the men anyway, looking middle-aged like all of us.’ She glanced down and he thought, she is boasting a little, but she had earned the right. ‘But then they all disappeared again.’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about them for years. Remember when they came out here?’

  ‘We couldn’t get to them. Your mother said she’d have the children when we went up to Auckland, then Ritchie got measles. Remember that, eh? It was a big deal.’

  He was silent, thinking about Ritchie.

  ‘Hey, don’t look sad, it was an all right weekend after all. The Kellys came over and we had a sort of party and stayed up all night because there wasn’t much point going to bed anyway because of Ritchie being sick, and we watched the dawn and the red sky coming over the hills and the rain settled in on us. Afterwards, when we’d had breakfast, the Kellys went home, then we went to bed and the children slept too. We woke up in the middle of the afternoon and things had come right. It was sort of like a holiday.’

  ‘So it was. And Julie Felix. Remember how she used to come on the box every Tuesday night? She reminded me of you, with all that long hair, walking down a track. I don’t know what sort of track it was. Railway? D’you remember?’

  She shook her head. ‘I remember the track, though, yes. And thinking that it was taking her somewhere. I think, maybe, yes, a little like her. I wanted to go along some track, some place. But I never did.’

  ‘You did,’ he said passionately. And he was not wrong. A head had turned in their direction and an old face from long ago blinked in surprise but was clearly unable to put a name to Peter’s face. The woman turned and walked on. ‘Look at you. Look how far you’ve come. Maybe further than me,’ he added with an effort.

  ‘Why have you come?’ she said then. ‘So soon. It’s not very long since you were here.’

  He had been dreading that she would ask. In all the long years he had only come at times of crisis, when she was in need. Now, if he was honest with himself and, more importantly, with her, he had come out of his own need. He believed that he owed it to her to tell her.

  He stretched his arms along the back of the seat. Leaves, red and citric yellow, fell in small drifts from the tree above them. One settled in her hair. He thought to brush it away but she appeared not to notice it, and it sat well, a small beneficent offering on her sleek head. Oh, lovely Bethany. Did he really owe her his burdens, he wondered. It began to look back to front to him. On the plane, and coming here, he had believed that it was an offering of sorts, to her, to tell her his troubles, so that she might stop feeling rejected. But that was so silly. Instead he would be burdening her with something she no longer wanted or needed. Bethany had assumed an image that was more acceptable to him; perhaps once, in his vanity, he might have believed that she had done it for him, but that was not so. She had done it for herself, out of her own needs, to satisfy herself alone. He was incidental to her life, although on a crisp autumn day she might be pleased to see him. She had even taken a whole day away from her work just to be with him, and that in itself was a gift. Clearly he was asking more of her, not giving at all.

  He shivered a little, for even on this brilliant day there was the premonition of snow to come in the months ahead, drifting down from the hills. More than that perhaps, a light breeze too, for leaves lifted and turned on the pebbles inlaid into the concrete paving slabs. Come the winter and a day of sleet, a day when the new pavement had not been swept and tidied as it had been today, it would look tawdry and ugly, just like any other small town mall imitating the glossiness of the smart new cities. With a pang he visualised Sydney, wondered whether he should be here at all, what he was doing sitting on a street bench with this woman whom he no longer recognised as the woman to whom he once had been married, and finding, in her mystery, a seductiveness that he could confess.

  She was looking at him waiting for an answer. He had forgotten the question, thought back, forcing himself to concentrate on their conversation and not on her soft and pliable mouth.

  ‘It’s your birthday next week,’ he said. ‘April the nineteenth.’

  ‘Clever you. Yes.’

  ‘At Easter, it often fell at Easter.’

  ‘Holy Morning.’

&
nbsp; ‘Is it?’

  ‘So Anna used to say.’

  ‘Has your sister got religion now?’

  ‘Anna doesn’t live here now. It just sounded nice, what she said.’

  ‘It does, too.’ Her face was turned to him. The midday light was pure. Bethany’s eyes still rested on him, enquiring. There had been a glancing away when he mentioned her sister. Perhaps he would never know. It was hard not to wonder what had happened in his absence.

  ‘I want to buy you something,’ he said with sudden decision. ‘A dress. For your birthday. Yes, you can accept a birthday present. Please. You will? Come on, you know where the best places are, I want to buy it for you now.’

  He had pulled her to her feet, almost roughly, yet in such a way that he hoped they would not be obvious in their actions. He was propelling her along the street, although it was she who was guiding their footsteps as if, in her inability to resist him, she was also abetting him in his intention. It was as though they had agreed to buy the dress from the moment he suggested it.

  They stopped in the entrance to a shop that she had already selected.

  ‘I have quite a lot of dresses now,’ she said.

  ‘I want you to have another one. Something you wouldn’t buy for yourself.’

  ‘What about our table?’

  He looked around the small trickle of lunchtime shoppers. ‘I reckon they’ll keep it. Do they queue for lunch here?’

  ‘I could buy it afterwards. After you’ve gone.’

  ‘I want to see you buy it.’

  ‘Then it’s for you, too.’

  ‘Do you mind that?’

  She shook her head then, sensing he was in trouble, perhaps that he was asking for something smaller, less frightening for both of them than what he had come for.

  In the shop, the proprietress hurried forward, a woman of aging chic, whom he dimly recalled had once had a much smaller and less well-presented shop in the main street. Since then she had clearly prospered and the clothing on display was stylish, as if she had learned to buy well. A couple of younger women with heavily jewelled hands, broadcasting rural affluence in tweed capes and slouchy suede hats, were choosing outfits for winter race meets. Bethany looked at ease among them, even though he guessed her clothes, neat as they had become, were seldom, if ever, purchased here.

  ‘Hullo, Mrs Dixon, how nice to see you,’ the proprietress greeted her. It was a shock to hear her called Mrs Dixon, as if he expected her to have some other name that did not associate them, did not bind them in a multiplicity of acts from which they would never recover, however much they might believe they had. Surprising, too, to see Bethany recognised and greeted as a respected woman of the town.

  He had intended ordering events as he would have done if buying a dress for another woman — announce his mission, discreetly suggest a price range, stand back and let the women believe they were taking over. As it was he said nothing. Already Bethany had said that she would look around for a few minutes, and that her friend would wait while she chose a dress.

  Again the words struck him as curious. Her friend. On reflection, as he watched her flicking through a rack, he decided that he liked it better than husband. How did people cope with such referrals from the past?

  She had taken a dress from the rack and was looking at it thoughtfully. It was a smoky-grey woollen garment with a cowled neckline and a narrow skirt.

  ‘I’d like to try this on,’ she said to the woman. ‘What do you think, Peter?’

  ‘Right. You’ll let me see you with it on?’

  ‘Why don’t you take a seat while Mrs Dixon changes?’ said the woman with what passed for an archly raised eyebrow. He took the chair as Bethany disappeared into a fitting room. He felt silly and exposed and precarious, perched on the light little wrought-iron chair in the middle of the showroom. The horsey women had left and he had the place to himself.

  Bethany seemed to take a long time changing. He tried to imagine her shedding her clothes and wished that he could have been there too, that buying the dress gave him the privilege of seeing the transaction through from beginning to end. He could see her struggling among straps and belts, her shoulders and arms erupting out of the top of her undergarments, her breasts bulging across the cutting line of the brassiere. Such big, pendulous, pear-shaped breasts they were; his children had suckled them, and he too.

  She emerged at last, clad in the dress. It fitted her perfectly. ‘Do you like it?’ she said, turning slowly in front of him. Underneath the wool her hips pivoted, jutting wide at the edges of her flat stomach. He had pinned those hips beneath him.

  ‘It’s lovely on, Mrs Dixon, nice for winter evenings. Lovely for five o’clock.’ As if five o’clock were a new discovery in the ordering of time. Bethany lovely in her grey woollen frock.

  On a model he saw a black dress with a high neck and rusty gold and scarlet borders. ‘What about that one over there?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you like this?’ said Bethany, with obvious disappointment.

  ‘Yes, but I’d like to see you in that one, too,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure that it’s me.’

  ‘Well, you need to be sure, don’t you? Have something to compare it with?’

  ‘All right then.’ She changed very quickly this time, and came out again in the black, gold and scarlet dress.

  She was laughing, though at what he could not tell. He watched her watching her reflection, smiled with her, thought of her mouth, and the white teeth that troubled her whenever she was pregnant. Once she had let him feel, with the tip of his tongue, the jagged edge of a tooth where the filling had come out. They knew each other, the good and the rotten. You couldn’t go much further than that.

  ‘It is me, isn’t it?’ She whirled around the room, the elegant skirt flaring around her knees, the silk puddling into little bunches of colour, the black displaying the colour of her skin. The old, wild, strange Bethany, the one who was different, the one from whom he had had to escape. Then she stopped in front of the mirror again, ablaze with excitement. In the glass, she saw his eyes behind her, and her own widened as if caught in the act of love; as if in some sudden, stolen joy, like their long ago rainy ‘holiday’ Sunday.

  ‘You’ll have it then?’

  She hesitated, sobering, the moment of joy past. ‘I don’t know that I’d get much wear out of it. But it is nice.’ She cast a reflective eye towards the grey.

  ‘Have them both,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘I couldn’t do that. All right then, I’ll take the black.’

  Outside, she said, ‘I never thought of you buying me a dress.’

  ‘For old times’ sake,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, for old times,’ she echoed, and he knew with sharp and painful clarity that she would probably never wear his present. Might even go back another day for the grey, perhaps on layby, for slow and laborious payment.

  Along the street she stopped at a store window full of exotic novelties. ‘I’d like to buy something for Jason,’ she said. ‘Would Patsy mind? Look, a Newton’s Cradle. Ritchie and Stephen had one that Nana and Grandad gave them one Christmas. I thought it was an absurd thing to give children but they couldn’t leave theirs alone.’

  Peter looked at the silver balls suspended on their fine filigrees of silver wire and imagined them bouncing off each other, connecting, parting, with riveting rhythmic perfection, coming to rest until they were touched again. Touched, moved, it was much the same.

  ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be seeing Jason,’ he said. ‘Maybe not for a little while.’

  Over lunch he said, carefully so as not to alarm her, not to knock her like the little balls that sprang away from each other, ‘It’s over you see, Patsy and me, we’ve separated.’

  ‘Poor Pete,’ she said, holding his wrist as if she were keeping count of his pulse. ‘Is it very sad?’

  ‘Enough. We’ve parted, which is hard, as you know.’ He said this to forestall the comfort he
wanted to ask of her. He could see now that it was much too much to ask of anyone, and that certainly he would give her nothing by saying, look it can happen to me, it’s not just you, it’s me too, I’ve been punished. Reward and punishment, they were long past.

  ‘I’ll miss Jason, of course,’ he added. But he didn’t know whether it was true. His blond Australian son whined a lot and was never satisfied with anything for long. A pity to have let Bethany spend so much money on her gift, but how could he betray his other child? And to her. He seemed to have made a habit of betraying his children. She would not be pleased to hear him disparage his son.

  ‘How are Stephen and Abbie?’ he asked, partly to change the subject, and partly because he really wanted to know.

  Bethany released his arm. ‘Stephen’s a whole lot better. Oh, it’s not saying much, but he’s started doing his homework, and he should get School Certificate. He’s civil. I mean that’s progress.’

  ‘I’m really glad. And Abbie?’ He knew he spoke too eagerly of the girl, yet of all the children that he and Bethany had had, it was Abbie, not his at all, whom he thought of the most.

  ‘Oh, she’s just the same.’ Bethany spoke offhandedly, but he had trespassed. He could not have Abbie in exchange for a dress, or a moment of the past, or for any reason at all. He and Bethany had exchanged two useless gifts (for he would keep the cradle for himself, as he suddenly divined was what she expected) and that was where it must stop. Kind Bethany, with slumbrous eyes, in a dark restaurant. She had touched him again and he turned to her.

  She murmured to him, and he had to listen carefully to make sense of what she said. ‘The nice thing is, if we wanted to, we could, but we don’t have to because we can. Isn’t that so?’

  He knew she was talking of making love, and that although she had made no absolute decisions she had, nonetheless, made his for him. In an hour, maybe two, they would go their own ways, carrying their offerings from each other. There would always be baggage of some sort or another but, as you went along, some of it could be abandoned, replaced if necessary. Wives, too, though friends were harder.