In the silence that follows, it seems to Michael and Madeleine that Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit have fallen into instant sleep, expired or even died. So complete is the silence. And, at last, after having been trapped in the room for what feels like the better part of the afternoon, they prepare to leave.
‘Oh fuck, the door!’ Pussy Cat’s voice is so loud there is, once again, the feeling that she may as well be in the room with them.
‘Nobody’s in.’
‘Oh, what the fuck. Who cares, anyway?’ Pussy Cat, who must have jumped up in alarm, now falls backwards, sending tremors through the old bed. ‘Be good for them.’
‘Who?’
‘Them.’ And Michael and Madeleine can imagine Pussy Cat’s soft, white paw pointing in their direction. ‘What do you suppose they do?’
‘I suppose they don’t do anything.’
‘I don’t believe that. I can’t believe they don’t find ways of, well…letting nature take its course.’
‘Never. She’s a good Catholic girl.’
‘So was Heloise.’
‘She was a sinning Catholic. They’re different.’
Pussy Cat bubbles with laughter as Madeleine breathes in deeply and exhales sharply.
‘Pity,’ Bunny Rabbit goes on. ‘Bit of a waste. I rather fancy her, actually.’
There is a sudden short silence.
‘You what?’ Pussy Cat pounces, nothing playful in her tone.
Michael and Madeleine know that menace is in the air. Its presence is confirmed with the strange hiss of language that follows.
‘Don’t you ever fancy anybody else.’
‘Calm down.’
But Pussy Cat won’t be calmed.
‘You ever, ever go near anybody else and I swear I’ll kill myself. I might even kill you.’
It is all delivered in a loud, hoarse whisper.
‘Well,’ and there is a fragile flippancy to Bunny Rabbit’s voice. He is not someone to be frightened easily but he is now. ‘Well,’ he goes on, ‘if you’re going to kill both of us, don’t forget to kill me first.’
There is a sudden explosion of shrill laughter, their door slams, and the whole house trembles and shakes with the impact. And then comes the muffled sound of their bed swaying and squeaking as Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit return to what they do best.
Michael and Madeleine rise, flee the room, and carefully negotiate the carpet-covered stairs, breathing easily once out on the footpath. They walk quickly back towards the hospital.
‘Sorry.’
‘What for?’ Madeleine says, not looking round at him.
‘That’s just it. I’m not sure.’
It is then that she turns upon him.
‘Then don’t say sorry till you know why.’
But she has no sooner said it than she reaches out for his hand. Behind them, up in their room, Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit have collapsed into sleep, a long, late-afternoon doze that will go into the evening and leave Pussy Cat irritable and touchy upon waking. And the more her Bunny Rabbit tries to smooth her fur, the more she will arch. And, later that night, when they are drinking and laughing with friends in the pub across the street where the Italian men sing each night like a heavenly choir, she will look for her Bunny Rabbit and find him staring out the window.
26.
Rita Begins Webster’s Museum
The first job is to clear out the old room to make space. Mrs Webster calls it the Games Room. It is at the back of the house and has its own entrance. It is, she says, perfect.
At some stage, it seems, during the last meeting of this Centenary Suburb Committee, it was decided there should be a museum, a dedication to Webster’s Engineering. Not just the man, but the establishment itself. There would be photographs, documents, old desks and chairs, bits of machinery, scraps of metal, and displays of the bits and pieces that the factory produced. Workers, old and new, could come and view the history of their life’s labours. As he had so often said himself, the Websters of this world would be impossible without labour. They had, between them, he had told his staff, created this thing that had been the centre of their working lives for most of their collective memory. Webster may well have brought this noise of his, this beast of production to the suburb, but he could never have done it alone. Ultimately, his gift, the beast of production, was a two-headed one. And so this museum would be a dedication to anyone who ever stepped inside the place, and everyone who still does.
This committee (and Michael tells Rita about it from time to time, how it is like stepping back into an old British comedy, and how he can only ever see them all as players from that old black-and-white world that gave them so many laughs when the laughs were needed), this committee seems to have money. Enough to put on a show like this. And so Rita stands at the doorway surveying the cluttered jumble of gaming tables and chairs and rolled-up rugs, all covered with successive layers of dust that would have taken decades to gather.
As much, Mrs Webster had told her earlier in the week, as much as she would love to look after the whole business herself, there just wasn’t time. Did she, Rita, understand? Besides, she went on, she might be too close to it all, and perhaps they would be better off with a clean pair of eyes, someone from outside the place, who had never stepped in, someone — she eventually suggested — like Rita. And as much as Rita declared that she couldn’t do it, she eventually nodded and the job was hers. And it was a job; she would be paid. This committee had money indeed.
Immediately, they moved on to the practicalities of the task at hand, Mrs Webster’s tone and words, brisk and brief, the kind of tone people use when they’ve just hired someone. The kind of tone Rita herself has slipped into when she, too, has hired any of the many tradesmen, who, over the years, have transformed her house into what it is today. But there’s something else about Mrs Webster’s tone. And it tells Rita that for all her talk about being too close to everything, there was a distinct touch of just not caring any more. Not so much too close as just plain removed. Someone who was quite relieved to have the matter taken out of their hands. She’s a curious case. And she’s always Mrs Webster, too. Rita is always Rita, but there is no hint that Mrs Webster will ever melt into Val. And Rita doesn’t take it personally, because she knows from Michael that even the members of this committee call her Mrs Webster. Even the mayor. It’s as though it’s not a name any more, but a title. Conferred upon her by the suburb. A title she’s happy to receive. One that suits her purposes. One that allows her to walk the same streets of the suburb as everybody else, but (like some sort of homegrown nobility) to be removed from it at the same time.
So here is Rita, standing at the door of the Games Room that smells like it hasn’t been aired in years, mulling over the curious case of Mrs Webster and contemplating the job at hand. Behind her, parked on the gravel drive at the back of the estate, the removalist’s van sits under a low, suffocating sky that gives every impression of settling in for the season. And, as the two men join her in the doorway, she finds herself employing the same tone of voice that Mrs Webster used when she employed Rita. The billiard table is a monster of a thing and will have to be dismantled before it is removed. The whole room, she informs them, will have to be cleared before she can begin. Tables, chairs in varying states of disrepair, sideboards, mantelpieces, and boxes, boxes, stuffed with all the things that are eventually stuffed into boxes, which are then sealed and forgotten.
Throughout the morning and early afternoon (as Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit merge into one amid moans and howls of laughter, and while Michael and Madeleine sit in his room waiting for it all to be over), the room is slowly, laboriously, cleared. And, late in the day, Rita has a view of the room: its dimensions, shape, and the light — not much of it — that the windows let in. And, as she sits there, amid the stirred dust and relics of Webster’s life, she compiles a list of what must be done.
And it is while she is compiling this list that there is a sudden explosion in the room. She looks up, not fearf
ul but puzzled to see that a number of boxes have fallen from the top of an old bookshelf and crashed onto the bare floorboards. A cloud of dust rises, particles swirling skywards in a shaft of light, spearing into the room through the trees outside. The balance that for so long has held this room together and kept it stable has been disturbed. And, as fanciful as it seems, it is as though the room, after all these years of silence, has something to say.
She puts her pen and paper down on the floor. The cardboard boxes are heavy, sealed with thick tape (as if whoever sealed them never intended them to be re-opened), but one of them has burst open upon impact. The others, which she can barely lift, she pushes against the wall. The contents of the broken box have spilled out onto the floor and she kneels, placing the collection of scattered items — the tools of office work, stamps, inkpads and official paper — one by one back into the box.
The small black business notebook amongst it all, for appointments and meetings, is for the year 1959. Her first impulse is to put the thing back in the box. Her second, upon reading the year, is to open it. This is not Rita’s way. She would be horrified at the thought of anybody reading her private papers. Everyone has a right to a private life, even when they’re dead, and she respects the rights of others as she would expect hers to be respected. But she can feel, even as she pauses with the slim black volume in her hands, that she is giving herself licence to pry. She has, after all, been entrusted with the task of preparing the room for the exhibits. And although Rita is only meant to prepare the room, not to select the items (the local historians and someone from the city library will do that), she is, nonetheless, involved. And, as the gold numbering of the year draws her in and bids her read, she tells herself that the box fell for a reason.
She is wondering why the year 1959 should feel significant, when she remembers that Webster died (if it can be called dying), that Webster ‘left’ this world in the summer of 1960 and she realises that this notebook is the business record of his last year as Webster the factory.
They are everyday entries. Regulation matters. Contacts, delivery dates, meetings (with people whose names mean nothing to Rita and who may or may not be around any more), addresses, phone numbers and so on. At first the entries are detailed, the names and places written in full. But, as the year progresses, the entries become more and more basic, until towards the final pages they are punched in in a kind of shorthand. Names have simply become first letters, places abbreviations. They are the entries, Rita suspects at first, of someone who is too busy to write things in full, someone who feels the pace of the year gathering and for whom the luxury of full sentences and complete names is no longer affordable. But as she flicks through the pages, these last official days of Webster the factory, a second suspicion occurs to her: that these just might be the entries of a man who simply doesn’t care any more.
And it is then that she flicks a page over and comes to the oddest thing. Not just full sentences but a whole paragraph of them. And not scribbled but carefully written down. But, however carefully they may be written, the words themselves make no sense. None at all.
A lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the clouds
What? It’s as though he had lost his wits, taken leave of his senses, and poured gibberish onto the page. The scribblings of someone who, after a lifetime of strict order and routine, had discovered, caved in to, the delights of gibberish and gobbledegook. It is only as she reads on that she realises she is reading poetry, that Webster may have written the words down carefully, but, for some reason, hadn’t bothered to arrange the words on the page the way the poet would have. For there is rhyme in there, and the more she reads this little entry, the more she sees there is also reason. But he wrote it out like you would anything else. Perhaps he was just crammed for space on the page, for on this day, November 27, 1959, he had three meetings, the details of which took up most of the page. And jammed in between was this odd business.
I balanced all, brought all to mind the years to come seemed a waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death
Poetry? Webster? The man who, Mrs Webster had assured her often enough, had never read any of the books on his shelf. That they were there for decoration and that it was she, Mrs Webster, who was the reader of the house. An odd thing to find in a business notebook, this outbreak of…what do you call it? She pauses, drumming the page with her fingers before the word bursts from her…humanity. An odd thing, this outbreak of humanity. The handwriting, she notes, looks like Vic’s. It was the way they were taught, the Vics and Websters of the world — and all the other children they played with in all those distant playgrounds before they became what they did. And while she is thinking this she remembers that it was Vic’s habit to write bits of verse and poetry on the backs of envelopes and in notepads, and then file them away in his wallet. But Webster the factory? It’s odd, even disturbing. And she can’t say why. And while she doesn’t know what it all means, because she never knew Webster, she has the distinct, unnerving feeling that something is wrong here. She’s been given a glimpse into something she was never intended to read. This, she tells herself in her mother’s voice, is what you get for prying. And if this is what the room has to say, then she doesn’t want to hear — and the room has no business blabbing.
What has disturbed her is the fact that she is now the recipient of knowledge. And she’d rather not be. For she now has to decide what to do with it. And, after quick and decisive thought, she decides to put the thing straight back in the box and seal it with the same thick tape — this time properly.
The only person who could possibly be interested in the contents of the notebook is Mrs Webster, but Rita, putting herself in Mrs Webster’s position, concludes that she would rather not know. Rita concludes, with utter certainty, that Mrs Webster would rather not know that the years of her marriage to Webster had been a waste of breath. If, indeed, that is the way to read it. And Rita, mentally arranging the jumble of words on the page as they ought to be, can see no other way. And the thought that her husband might very well have driven into oblivion and been delighted to do so is not something a wife wants to hear. Nor does the suburb, which knows — and chooses to believe or not believe — that a most unfortunate accident took place. Nothing more mysterious than that. And it’s best kept that way.
With this all in mind, she places the notebook back into the box, along with the stamps and inkpads and the official paper. When the workmen are back, she points to the boxes and suggests they tape up the broken one, properly this time.
A few moments later, the boxes are all in the back of the removalist’s van. With everything else, they will be taken away, stored and forgotten.
It will take what’s left of the day and the next morning to clear the old Games Room, but already it is less cluttered, and Rita is beginning to see it as an exhibition space. And so she now turns her mind to the happy task of sweeping the dust and debris away and transforming the room.
27.
At the Pub Window
How was it they ever knew what to do? Vic may be staring out through the pub window at the comings and goings of the town (while Rita clears Webster’s Games Room), but he doesn’t see any of it. He is looking at a field from long ago, a sodden paddock, one that may or may not be still there if he was to go back and try to find it. This field is cold and damp with evening dew, but it doesn’t concern the young couple walking across it. The young woman is called Jessie. And he says it again, for the name has not been on his lips for many years now. She is sixteen. An old sixteen, as all sixteens were then. Perhaps this is why they knew what to do. They didn’t, but she did.
There is no reason for this, none that Vic can find, to explain why he should be back there. No spark, no face in the crowd. No scent, no taste. But there it is again, this field he once shot rabbits in and which he dreamt of earlier in the summer, popping up again, clear enough to step into, a sudden rush of memory strong enough to turn
day into night. So strong a memory that he is not looking out the pub window as he was just a few seconds before, but staring into a night of country darkness in which the moon is good. The field, the trees and the jagged fence posts are coated in a silvery film. The yellow squares of house lights that define the hamlet and the country intersection provide the only colour. The two young people on the damp field don’t notice the hamlet, but the old Vic, the one watching, looks over their shoulders to that distant clump of colour, distant but warm, and memory opens the door of the small wooden shack of a farm house where a family is gathered round the fire: the father smoking, the mother watching the flames from her chair, two boys reading on a rough mat. They seem not to notice that their daughter is missing, as is the young Vic, who lives throughout the week in the town nearby with his mother and with this family on weekends, Vic who is now like one of the family and whose rabbit (the rabbit he shot earlier that same morning) has just fed everybody. It is acknowledged that Vic is a good shot, the best shot of the whole bunch, and it is not uncommon for them to feed on rabbit during these weekends that he comes to stay. But, for the moment, nobody seems to notice that he and their daughter are not there.
And just as memory opened the door of the house, memory now closes it again and once more he is gazing upon the two figures in the field, wondering how on earth they knew what it was that had to be done. And with this puzzle vaguely occupying his mind, he watches the condensation rise from their mouths as they settle into the thick grass beside the crumbled remains of a stone wall. There they were, there they are, and there they will always be. Breath rising from their bodies.
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