The Time We Have Taken

by Steven Carroll

  She leads him up the stairs, and he can now unselfconsciously observe her. He notices for the first time that she is casually dressed. And then, and he wishes he hadn’t but it is done before he knows it, he mentally substitutes the word ‘hastily’ for ‘casually’. It is noteworthy, unusual even, because — unlike the female students he knows — Madeleine always dresses with care. Rarely in jeans and rarely in loose jumpers. But tonight she is wearing jeans and a sloppy pullover. The pullover — which he has never seen before, and which looks to be more a man’s pullover than a woman’s — has slid down one shoulder and he can see quite clearly the line of her collarbone, and her neck, and he notes also that she is not wearing a bra. Nor is she wearing a shirt. Beneath the pullover, she is naked. She is, in six months of them being together, as naked as she has ever been with him. And he concludes that he is right. She is hastily dressed.

  On the landing she turns, kisses him briefly, then opens the door of the lounge room and pushes him in with a laugh, saying that she was just about to go to bed, that she needs to brush her hair at least, that she is not quite ready to be received. And when she murmurs the word ‘received’ it is with the italics of her raised eyebrows.

  Then he is sitting on the sofa in the lounge room, the gas heater low, the moon casting a shifting, milky shaft of light through the curtains. He rises, walks to the window and stares down upon the footpath, calculating that no more than a minute has elapsed since ringing the bell. And this, this is the lighted room he gazed up at. The room is neat and ordered. It relaxes him. He is, once again, in her sphere. And as he is looking down on the footpath, he substitutes the word ‘casually’ for ‘hastily’ — which he now realises he was too quick in applying. She was, after all, about to go to bed. He never wears a watch but he can guess the hour. The lack of traffic, the deserted street and the high moon outside all tell him that the night is getting on. He relaxes, but resolves not to stay long for she must surely be working early in the morning. All is well again.

  When Madeleine re-enters the room moments later, closing the door firmly behind her, her hair is up, pinned with a black velvet clip. She could almost be stepping out for the night instead of turning in. As they both lean back on the sofa, he sees that the pullover has been straightened and that she is now wearing a bra.

  ‘You don’t mind…me dropping in?’ he asks again.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Of course. But I haven’t got my face on. You’re seeing the real me.’

  Once again, the word ‘real’ is delivered with the italics of her raised eyebrows. He hadn’t even noticed or cared, but he now asks himself if he has ever seen her without make-up before and he concludes that he hasn’t. And it is oddly thrilling, a kind of nakedness in itself. She thinks she looks plain, he hums inwardly. If only she knew. This, he tells himself, this is how she would look if… This is how she would look if he were to wake with her in the mornings, the Madeleine he would see that nobody else would.

  ‘I was just passing.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Are you pleased?’

  ‘Can’t you tell?’

  And it is then that she rises, almost, it seems to Michael, on cue, and plays the record already there on the stereo. Music, the kind of music couples play late at night, romantic music — not the kind he associates with Madeleine. This music (which is beneath her in the same way that words such as ‘hunk’ are beneath her) swells and fills the room, like music at the end of a party rather than the end of an evening. And, when she sits back on the sofa, she places her arms round his neck without speaking and kisses him. It is a long, luxuriant kiss, and she is kissing him more than he is kissing her. And, when he inquires if he ought to leave because she must, after all, be working early the next morning (he feels guilty for detaining her), she pushes him firmly against the back of the sofa so that rising now would be difficult even if he wanted to, and resumes what feels like the same luxuriant kiss. But as he is about to lose himself in the oblivion of it all, he is suddenly disturbed by something out there. Footsteps. He swears he could hear, for all the world, somewhere out there beyond the music and their breathing and kissing, footfalls on the stairs. Then footfalls descending the stairs, out the front and fading into the street. And was that the distant thump of the front door or car door in the night?

  He is tense, his ears alert for any sound. As he lifts his face, and for a moment extricates himself from the embrace, he looks intently at the window, the milky shaft of shifting moonlight still playing with the lace.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks, eyeing him with sudden alarm and concern.

  His eyes are wide, asking, almost pleading, can I trust you?

  ‘What is it?’ she whispers.

  She is troubled. Her face is now so close, her skin so warm, her eyes so alight with…with what he can only call care.

  ‘Nothing,’ he says, staring at the window, the moonlight, the room, then back to the nakedness of her face and this enthralling creature she calls the ‘real’ her.

  When the music stops shortly afterwards, she reminds him that she is indeed working early the next morning, that it has been a lovely surprise, but that he perhaps ought to go now.

  Downstairs, she stands framed in the doorway. The concern is still in his eyes, the phantom footfalls still in his ears. And it is then, her eyes gazing knowingly into his as if, indeed, reading his thoughts and drawing him back to her, that with a playful smile she pulls back the neck of the sweater (which he has never seen until tonight) to reveal the full length of her neck and the crest of her bared shoulder.

  The effect is instantaneous. So much so that, at first, he does not see the invitation in the gesture.

  There is no one out on the street. But there could be. At any moment. As his feet finally reach the doorway, his lips come to rest on her open neck (his eyes closed).

  She does this. When he thinks he knows her, he realises he doesn’t. And it is a puzzle, a constantly shifting puzzle. How she can be his Madeleine in private — the private, controlled Madeleine who goes so far and so far only when they are alone and nobody is looking — and then, as it were, fornicate with him in public. Fornicate with her shoulder and eyes and the line of her perfect neck.

  Eyes still closed, his lips finally leave her neck and, as she draws the band of the sweater back into place, it is as though their accustomed places have been thrown into the air, and it is love that lights her eyes, and gratitude that opens his.

  She smiles and takes one pace back into the hallway. She smiles playfully, both familiar and strange. The young woman he takes to be his Madeleine, always slipping from him. And, as he loses himself in her eyes, he is convinced he will never know her enough to keep her. She will always be leaving, even as she is drawing him back.

  Then he is on the footpath and the honeyed wedge of light in her doorway disappears. The road curves up the hill to the university grounds, and, as he walks up the footpath, he occasionally glances back, half expecting to see something or someone, but not sure who or what.

  In the years to come, he will know what it is to receive love and feel only gratitude in return. He will, in short, know what it is to be Madeleine. But on this night, on this street, Michael is experiencing the most important moments of his life until now and he knows it. Perhaps it is true, he is wondering. Perhaps it’s true what the love-sick poems and books that he reads tell him — that we only ever fall in love once, and after that we may as well die. That the mind and the body can only ever deal with the earthquake of love once. By the time he reaches the top of the street and looks back down along the incline leading to the hospital and to Madeleine’s door, one part of him is convinced it is true. The other is already rearranging the scene — and all their scenes — more satisfactorily.

  When he returns to his room, he finds a pamphlet pinned to his door. It is from Bunny Rabbit, who must have slipped in when Pussy Cat was sleeping. There is a rally, it seems, at the university the next d
ay. Be there or be square! But there is no room for meetings or rallies or marches in Michael’s mind. It is a private Michael with a private mind that goes to bed and that wakes in the morning, indifferent to the public march of History out there on the streets around him.

  38.

  The Last Day of Winter

  Spring is in the air. On this last day of winter, although it is late in the afternoon, the darkness that always descends early in the thick of winter does not. Mrs Webster’s gardens are still light and so too is the mood of the committee as they gather at the front door.

  There is an air of congratulation. What seemed to be an improbable proposal when first put forward by Peter van Rijn that steamy January morning had now bloomed and blossomed like the flowers in Mrs Webster’s garden. It was — and they had all eventually confessed their pleasant surprise to each other throughout the year — actually working. The suburb was more alive with events and celebrations than anybody could remember, for, once the idea had taken off, everybody wanted to be part of it. Small groups and societies that nobody even knew existed were writing to the committee applying to be part of the celebrations. A Scottish group was suggesting that the suburb be made the twin or sister town of a village somewhere in the highlands where the original sheep farmers who settled the suburb came from. Not to mention a statue of a farmer in the main street to remind everybody of their agrarian beginnings. Tiny religious organisations that seemed to have mushroomed overnight, sporting groups, amateur science foundations, reading groups — it was a revelation to the committee just what was going on in the suburb — were all writing to the committee for one reason or another, asking for money. The whole place was humming.

  Michael, pleased to have the afternoon off teaching, is gazing out over the gardens, towards the garage in the far corner (out of view) where, as a teenager, he’d collected money from Webster for his cricket club, surprising him as he was cleaning the sleek, black sports car that was his one trifling infidelity — his one little secret that had been casually discovered by Michael, who had left with silver coins in a money bag for the club, and a ten-pound note in his shirt pocket for his silence. Webster’s estate had felt like another country back then, and it still had that air, even though Webster and that sleek, black little sporting job of his were long gone.

  And while he is dwelling on those days that seemed so distant, almost innocent now (although he knows perfectly well that no time ever is), the vicar of St Matthew’s remarks on what a fine job Rita did with the exhibition. How everybody said so, and what a fantastic success the whole thing had been. Beyond anyone’s imaginings. In fact, so successful had it been that it looks set to go on and on. It had touched a spot in the suburb that the suburb didn’t even know was there, because it’s easy to overlook the ordinary, familiar things that are around you every day of the year, because, well, they are. Until someone or something alerts everybody to the possibility that they just might not be so ordinary after all.

  So, with spring already in the air, the mayor, Mrs Webster, the two priests, Peter van Rijn and Michael (the local member is ‘sitting’) all breathe in that hint of the new season and quietly congratulate each other on a job well done.

  As they are about to break up, the mayor remarks on the mural. Still under wraps. Nobody allowed to look. Even peek. Bit odd, isn’t it? What’s Mulligan up to? For there is still a general feeling of unease about this artist who spends his days up the wall, suspended on a pulley like some latter-day Michelangelo. But aren’t all these artistic types oddballs in one way or another (and here they all turn to Michael)? It is then that the mayor casually mentions to Michael that this Whitlam of theirs will be coming to the suburb soon to open a sports ground. Michael eyes the mayor as if looking upon an entirely different person, and the mayor, quietly, inwardly, congratulates himself on having knocked the smug smile off Michael’s face. Catching, as he does so, the hint of a smile in Mrs Webster’s eyes that says, ‘Well done, Harold.’

  With the year rapidly closing in on them, they all agree that their next meeting (and possibly their last) should finalise a date for the unveiling and that the artist should be told of the deadline. It is, after all, the Crowning Event of the year and will take a bit more planning than anything else so far. Speeches will have to be written, guest lists compiled and invitations sent out. The committee, of course, will all need to be there. And again they turn to Michael who, when the time comes, will be at one of those moratoriums that Mrs Webster (standing in her doorway and farewelling the committee) finds both amusing and annoying and that sum up Michael and his kind. For Michael, his kind and this Whitlam of theirs are a wave, she imagines, a wave that has been steadily building over the years and will not be stopped. They are History, their every word and gesture tells you. Michael and his kind, and she quickly looks him up and down, they’re a bit like those kings who crown themselves without having the decency to wait for the hands of History to do it for them.

  The group disbands and drifts back into a suburb contentedly humming with a new-found sense of itself, as the commerce of the Old Wheat Road prepares to shut down for the day and the street lights and house lights flicker and pop into existence on this last evening of winter.

  Part Four

  Spring

  39.

  The Invention of Death

  Pussy Cat is at it again. The sobbing goes on night after night. It has been going on for weeks. Bunny Rabbit does not return. Pussy Cat, who will only ever fall in love once, sleeps through the days and will not answer her door. Nor does anybody see her come or go. During the days she is silent, and in the evenings it all begins again. Pussy Cat howls for her Bunny Rabbit in the night. But Bunny Rabbit has moved on and now nibbles ears other than hers.

  She howls in the night, perhaps really believing that somewhere out there his ears will prick up and hear her call, her call that comes to him not only across the rooftops and chimneys of the city, but across those endless nights that have intervened since she last saw him. And perhaps she is also remembering, as she howls from her room, those times — and there were all too many of them towards the end — those times, those days and nights when they could do nothing right and it was clear that the adventures of Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit were over. Those nights when she bristled at everything he said or did, and the more he tried to smooth her fur the more she arched. Those nights when she offered him the choicest roots and clovers of her love, and his nose twitched and his eyes turned to the horizon. When taunts led to tears and tears to taunts, and they could each do nothing but wrong.

  Michael falls asleep to the faint sounds of her sobbing. Downstairs, Mulligan walks loudly from his room to the kitchen, slamming doors, for Mulligan has only one thing on his mind. He has no time for anybody’s sobbing. But the sobs continue. And it is like this the following evening, and the evening after. Then one night all the sobbing stops. Silence. The sorrow has run its course, she has run out of tears. The capital ‘L’ of life, Michael assumes (eyeing the closed door of her room before leaving in the morning) can begin again. The September sun has done its work. Pussy Cat will shed the burdensome fur of winter and spring into Life once more.

  But when Michael returns later in the day from school, Bunny Rabbit is sitting on the landing, head in his hands. Pussy Cat’s door is open, the room is empty.

  When Michael stops halfway up the stairs upon seeing him, Bunny Rabbit lifts his head to speak, though he barely seems to notice Michael. It is the look of someone profoundly unprepared for the eventuality of life turning serious. And as soon as Michael sees that look in his eyes, he knows what has happened.

  ‘She didn’t mean it.’

  It is as though having told her so often that she wouldn’t do it, Bunny Rabbit couldn’t conceive of the fact that she actually had. It was not written into her. It was not written into them. Therefore, it had to be a mistake, and his taunts, his careless words, had not killed her. Not, that is, if the whole thing had been an accident. Not if she
didn’t mean it.

  Michael sits on the stairs below him and watches as the disbelieving face of Peter plops back into his hands. He had been Bunny Rabbit, she had been his Pussy Cat. Together they’d had the most wonderful adventures. And it occurs to Michael that they had had their innocence, after all. That, for all their talk and their ways, their joints, their drugs and their loud and frequent copulation, they were at heart — these children of the Age — more innocent than he’d ever imagined. Now his Pussy Cat was gone, and he would never play her Bunny Rabbit again. Not for her, or for anybody else. From now on, he would simply have to walk through the world as Peter. And those wonderful adventures he’d known in another incarnation — when love had metamorphosed them into storybook animals — would become the touchstones for measuring the value of all subsequent adventures.

  Michael leaves him sitting on the landing at the top of the stairs. He retraces his steps and leaves the house. To simply go to his room and read, as he usually would at the end of the day, would be to act as though nothing had happened.

  So we’ll go no more a-roving. He can’t remember who wrote it or even if he’s got it right. Who cares? Pussy Cat is dead. And Bunny Rabbit and Pussy Cat will no longer go a-roving. Whatever that means. But it doesn’t matter what it means. The right words have come at the right time. These, at the moment, as he crosses the street, past the hotel opposite, and through the drab playgrounds of the housing commission high-rise, are the only words that matter, even if their sense isn’t readily apparent. For what the words are telling him — and which he will only realise much later — is that the poetic age of youth died in Pussy Cat’s room, either late last night or early this morning. And, like old friends, these words come to us and stay with us until the thing that needs to be taken in is taken in.