Borrowed Light

by Anna Fienberg

  ‘You must have been so lonely.’ I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I remember when the crying thing started. I was going for a walk, just a week after it happened. I’d been suspended, and I had all this time at home. My parents were both working, and in the living room there was a big clock. It ticked so loudly, beating out the minutes, like some sort of sentence in purgatory. The curtains were always pulled shut because we had leather sofas given to us by Grandad. Sunlight is bad for leather. It was so gloomy. There was a lone shaft of light that came in around ten. It was like God’s voice or something. It made a diamond on the carpet. Everything else outside it was dead. I used to think that if I dared step inside it, I’d be forgiven. I went for a walk in the bush, but the track seemed to go branching on forever. This panic overtook me and I began to run. But the more I ran, the longer the track grew. Everything looked unfamiliar. It was like some horror cartoon, a surrealist painting. I expected to see watches melting over tree trunks. I could never get to the end.’

  Richard was gazing out at the sea, but I knew he wasn’t seeing the waves or the girls in bikinis, or the kids digging moats. He was blind inside his own head. I touched his arm.

  ‘The panic never really went away—not for months. I took some tablets, I can’t remember what they were, and they muffled the fear a bit, it was more like a sound far away. You know the whirr of a lawnmower in the next street? There was just this terrible sadness, as if I’d lost something I could never get back. I couldn’t name it, so I couldn’t get it back.

  ‘I had no control over my face. No control over the crying. It was terrible. The headmaster came into our class one day and told everyone that I was having a bad time and to be kind to me. It was so humiliating, and they still said, “Don’t be heavy, Richo.” I remember having these obsessive thoughts about water. I kept trying to calculate how much water I was shedding. I was so heavy and so weak—just like H20. There was nothing solid.’

  I nodded. ‘You know those rollers they use to flatten new roads? Their wheels are filled with water because that’s the heaviest thing there is. Amazing, isn’t it, that something so transparent can be so heavy.’

  ‘Yeah, amazing.’

  ‘The wheels press down on the tarred surface until it is smooth and flat. Did you know that a roller filled with water weighs fourteen tonnes? That’s as heavy as five thousand watermelons.’

  ‘The wheels are called drums.’

  ‘I know that. So anyway, how did you get over it? Did you just dry up one day, like the Dead Sea?’

  Richard’s gaze flew back to the table, and me. He focused again, and gave a half-smile. ‘No, there were no sudden miracles—I just had to get through the week.’ His eyes narrowed, and I looked away. My heart started to thump. When he finished his story, he’d expect me to tell mine. I was dying to, and dying not to.

  Richard rubbed his hand over his face. ‘There were small things. Dad stopped being angry and started to listen. I told him about the water and the sadness. He sent me to a counsellor and she suggested I go to another school. Life gradually improved. But I still don’t know if it was all because of the money thing. That kind of sadness hardly ever has just one cause, do you think? I mean, we’re not all identical little robots wired up the same way, getting sad or happy if you press button B.’

  ‘Or a bunch of chemicals, fulfilling our end of an equation. E=mc2.’

  ‘That’s right. I mean, another kid might just have said, ‘Hey, sorry,’ and got on with his life. He might even have used that kind of notoriety to become a hero—you know, a wicked guy with a past.’

  ‘A pirate.’

  ‘A blackguard with a heart of gold.’

  ‘A free radical!’

  ‘He could have gone on, deeper and deeper into a life of crime. Just think, he could have blown up school garbage bins, snatched little kids’ lunches—’

  ‘That’s hardly heroic.’

  ‘No.’

  I threw a crust onto the ground for the seagulls. ‘It’s all in the way you see things, isn’t it. Some people act tough like that to be cool—you know, defiant. I remember Jeremy asked me once, “Do you see out of your eyes like I see out of mine?”

  ‘Good question. I often wondered that as a kid. I wondered if my father saw the same shade of red that I did. I had a thing about red. I wanted him to love it as much as I did. Fire engines and sunsets and red T-shirts and Jonathan apples. I suppose no one sees anything exactly the same.’

  ‘No, it’s a scary thought. You sort of want to be like other people, don’t you. You don’t want to be an island, floating out there on your own.’

  ‘Mm.’

  We watched a seagull pecking at a crust, its black eyes darting nervously.

  Richard laughed suddenly. ‘I remember, I spent the whole of Year Five trying to talk with an Irish accent.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, there was this new boy, Liam, who’d come from Ireland, and he picked me to be his friend. He sort of claimed me, like a brother. It was exciting to have such an exotic best friend, and I didn’t want to disappoint him for a minute. We’d sit together at lunch, and Liam used to eat really quickly, so I did too. I had constant stomach aches. I was always hungry, but I didn’t want him to find any other friends while I finished my sandwich. He was often homesick, and he used to talk about his friends back home. He’d do their voices, and in this game we had—throwing spit balls at an enemy gang—he wanted me to be Patrick, his friend in Dublin. I had to yell out Irish curses as we threw them. Patrick was very fiery, Liam said. I used to practise the accent every night in front of the mirror, and soon I had it just right. I talked like that at breakfast, and at the shops, and when people asked me my name, I said “Patrick”. People in the street used to think Liam and I were brothers fresh off the boat from Ireland.’

  ‘You wanted to be just like him.’

  ‘Yeah, I would have shaved my head too, if he had.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Oh, he went back to Dublin.’

  ‘That must have been terrible.’

  ‘Yes, it was. My father threatened to send me after him. But in a strange way, I felt more relaxed after he’d gone. I actually slept better. I wasn’t up for hours learning Irish poems. It really had been such a strain trying to be someone else.’

  Richard leaned against me. His mouth was only an inch away from my hair. ‘What I didn’t know was, you don’t have to be the same as someone else, to be close.’

  ‘There’s your gap thing again. Reaching out across the abyss!’

  ‘It’s your gap thing, Ms May. I’m only picking up your theme. Why do you hold yourself so far away?’

  His eyes were darker at this angle, forest green. I noticed for the first time that they turned up at the comers, foxlike. Perhaps he would pounce. He looked ferocious, fervent. There was this sort of hum between us, like a live telegraph line. The anticipation was delicious, excruciating. I couldn’t stand it. I sort of groaned and he pulled my head toward him and our lips crushed together. He opened my mouth and his warm breath spilled into me and I could taste him on my tongue. I wanted to open further, I wanted to slide open like a cave in a rock, a mossy, moist cave, filled with him.

  ‘Stop chasing that poor seagull and come here!’ A woman’s voice behind us made us spring apart. She was calling to a small boy who came and sat on the opposite side of our bench. He stared at us while his mother lumped a mountain of parcels onto the table.

  Richard and I held hands. I kept my head nestled in his neck. It didn’t feel dangerous any more. When our skin was touching I felt safe and damp, like a new-born animal. I wanted him to lick me all over, the way a mother does her cub.

  The boy ran his toy car over the table. ‘Vroom, vroom,’ he went as it crashed into his mother’s elbows.

  ‘Sit still, will you?’ she snapped, in an end-of-her-tether voice. There were red marks on her arms where the bag straps had been. I smiled at the boy and did a cross-ey
ed maniac face. He giggled. A Jeremy pang shot through me. I shoved the thought away.

  Sitting close on that bench, I smelled the sun in Richard’s shirt. There were so many little shadows and valleys in his neck and shoulders, places where you could nestle. I wondered what it would be like to travel over his chest, into the hollows of his armpits. It would be dark and hidden in there, silky with hair. I could breathe in his private smell. We grinned at each other. I wanted to tell him more.

  I ached to tell him how brave he was, the way he’d talked of his shame so openly. Imagine what Miranda Blair would do with information like that. I wanted to tell him how it made me feel—so connected, switched on, and I wished I could give his past back to him, all shiny and transformed with my words. I wished I could make a present of myself, the way he had.

  But I wasn’t used to people showing me their dark side. I didn’t know the right words to use in reply. ‘I’m really glad you told me’ sounded so superficial, like ‘Great, thanks for telling me, now I’m warned and I’ll look out for my handbag’. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. It seemed so fragile, this offering of his, and in my clumsy hands it could break. My mother always got a clouded look when we talked about anything emotional. I could tell that she thought what I said was callow, not worthy of the great sea of sorrow that she lived in. I wished I had practised this, the way Richard had practised being Patrick.

  ‘Do you want to go for a walk?’ I said.

  As we got up our thighs brushed together. I glanced at Richard. I wondered if he knew how much I wanted him to touch me. I felt a tide of gratitude wash over me—one day I’d tell him about this, how he made storms break in my skin. He took my hand and we fitted together, fingers laced. I was brimming with light and suddenly, just for a moment, it spread into my veins and through my heart and over my belly. It was like finding the switch in a dark room. It was my light, they were my feelings, and I could have flown all the way over that stone path with the ocean lapping on the left and Richard on the right and the curve of Shelley Beach at the end like a glittering prize.

  Richard was pointing to a ship on the horizon. It was so far away it looked as if it were stuck on to the sky with glue.

  ‘It really is a beautiful day, isn’t it?’ said Richard, stopping on the path.

  ‘It’s luscious,’ I agreed.

  ‘You’re luscious,’ said Richard. He ran a finger down my arm.

  I laughed with delight, I couldn’t help it. It came out as a snort. ‘I feel luscious—like a juicy fat fruit!’

  I began to run, I didn’t know what else to do with all this light and energy, I thought I’d leap off the face of the earth. Richard chased after me. ‘Come here,’ he cried, ‘I want to bite you!’ A man walking his dog stared at us. I let Richard catch me.

  ‘You don’t look tired any more,’ he said.

  ‘No. Maybe I could be the first woman to run at the speed of light.’ I grinned at him. But he looked serious, like when we’d first sat down at the bench.

  I started to walk again. He was silent next to me. He didn’t look out at the ocean. I knew he was waiting. It was my turn.

  Oh bugger it—why couldn’t we just enjoy this moment? Why did we have to go ferreting in the dark, when there was this big bowl of blue sky around us? I felt trapped, resentful. I didn’t want to talk about that. I didn’t feel like it. I wanted to go on being a ripe pear in that bowl. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. What was that line about ‘fearful symmetry’? Telling isn’t symmetrical. You can’t get even. It was all very well for him, his sins were over, in the past. He’s confessed and had absolution. Mine were still evolving.

  I felt the blanket come down on me. It was like turning off the sun.

  I stopped. ‘I feel a bit sick,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Let’s sit here for a while, then,’ said Richard, settling himself on the low stone wall.

  We sat and watched the boats. We didn’t say much. A chill breeze began to blow off the ocean. I put on my jumper and folded my arms to keep the warmth in. We were separate islands on a stretch of stone. I made bits of conversation, feeding morsels into the silence. I hated myself. It was just like it had always been. I wasn’t brave enough. I wasn’t enough for him. Disappointment flapped between us like a wet cloth.

  I glanced at his profile—the unswerving line of his nose, the chin thrust out. He looked at things straight on, he kept his chin up. Richard’s brand of bravery was so powerful, I thought, he could probably demolish Miranda like a licorice allsort. She’d be left without a word. And he’d just drive away, the drums of his roller sloshing.

  AS THE SUN slid down behind the cliff, we began to walk back.

  The street lights were coming on. Pine trees frayed against the rosy sky. Richard’s favourite colour. He put his arm around me and my shoulder fitted neatly under his arm. I wished I could go home with him like that, his favourite teddy bear. I remembered that old Elvis Presley song, ‘I want to be/ bop bop bop/ your teddy bear.’ Dad used to sing that to me when I was little. He wasn’t half bad at the hip swivel then. He wouldn’t be caught dead doing it now. Mum would roll her eyes at him and point at his paunch.

  As we walked up the Corso, toward the wharf, I noticed the pools of light on the concrete. I remembered how the light had filled me up, back there on the stone path. Maybe there’d be another chance. Maybe you can’t say everything, not all at once.

  We kissed goodbye at the bus stop. There was an oval of warmth where our lips met. But when his mouth left mine I felt flat, like mineral water when all the bubbles have left the glass.

  THAT NIGHT, OUTSIDE my window, there was a crescent moon. The hook of light hung in the mulberry tree. At two in the morning it had risen clear of the tree, over the rooftop. I could just see the dark part of the moon faintly, like the flesh of a ghostly orange.

  I stayed there at the window for a while. I looked at that dark circle of moon. It was the shape of possibility, of something barely there. As the moon moved on in its orbit and the earth revolved, the dark part would slowly creep toward the light. And everything would be revealed.

  Part Three

  THEY’RE ALL DIRTY scumbuggits, Cally and Mum and Grandma, they’re full of poo and nasty bits of wall scraping. They’re blobs of mucus and toenail muck. I hate them all. I could step on them with giant boots. No one ever does what I want. They don’t think about me. No one cares.

  Today is Wednesday. Sam Underwood was coming over. For the first time. We were going to have chocolate cake and get a move on with my bunker. I found another shovel. I had it all planned—we were going to dig together, we might have dug down so far, we could have reached the centre of the earth. It’s really hot down there, but I had the hose ready. Near the centre of the earth we might have found bits of really old meteorite, like the one that fell 65 million years ago. It ended everything for the dinosaurs. Cally’s the biggest scumbuggit of all. She promised the cake, it was her idea. Why do people make promises and then forget?

  It’s not fair.

  When I got home on Wednesday, I said, ‘So where’s the cake, Cally?’ She clapped her hand over her mouth like she was going to be sick. ‘Oh Jeremy,’ she said, ‘I forgot. We have to go over to Grandma’s today. We can make another time with Sam, I promise. You’d better ring him now before he leaves.’

  I kicked her in the leg. Then I rang Sam. He was just leaving to come over. He had to go and tell his mum to put the car back in the garage. I heard her say, ‘Oh shit.’ He said I was a scumbuggit. He said I must really live in a tent then, or an old shed maybe.

  ‘I’m not your friend any more,’ he said. He said that before he said goodbye.

  Maybe I’ll never see Sam Underwear again. I mean, I guess I’ll see him, but it won’t be the same. He’ll look different. He won’t be my partner any more when we line up. He’ll tell everyone that I live in a shed. He’ll tell them I smell.

  When we went over to Grandma’s, no one enjoyed it. I couldn’t see the poin
t of it. Mum didn’t even come. Grandma went on and on about black holes or something. But she kept yawning. Grandma said that everyone at the conference was excited because a black hole has been discovered in our very own galaxy. I wasn’t excited, I was scared. What I wanted to know was, are any of those scientists tracking the meteorites? Can they see any coming near earth? Could a meteorite get swallowed into a black hole? Grandma said she didn’t have any new information on meteorites, except she’d heard that a group of people were looking for a crater in the Amazon jungle. How far away is the Amazon jungle?

  Cally said I had to visit Grandma because she had a present for me. It was just a silly old shirt. It had a picture of a crocodile in the corner. Grandma also gave me some money, but you can’t even use it here. So what’s the point? It’s called ‘lira’—it sounds like a silly girl’s name. Grandma gave Cally a present, too. When Cally said ‘Thank you’ she gave this stupid smile—all her gums showed, it was a pretending-to-be-happy smile when you don’t mean it.

  I don’t care, anyway. I don’t like people. I’d rather be a dog. Batman’s dog. Tomorrow I’m going to get a move on with my bunker. I don’t need any help. I’m not going to let anyone in with me. No one deserves it. When the meteorite crashes, I’ll be the only one saved. But when I come out, there’ll be no one to play with. So what’s the point?

  I asked Cally after dinner if she’d heard about the crater in the Amazon. She said yes, that some Brazilian scientists thought a large meteorite fell there in 1930. She said not to worry because most meteorites are turned to gas and dust before they hit the earth. But what about the other ones?

  Tomorrow I’m going to get on with my bunker, just in case. There’s nothing else to do, anyway.

  TWO MORE DAYS.

  I can get through Thursday if I have something to look forward to afterwards. I’ve learnt that from Jeremy. He elaborately selects and designs his rewards, staggering them through the day like the little sugar boosters needed by diabetics. For instance, Jeremy always eats his favourite thing last. Like if we were having lamb cutlets and mashed potato, he’d eat the mash first. Jeremy loves sucking on the bones. Mum looks the other way when he does that. But I think it’s a good sign. If Jeremy trusted nothing, he’d go for the bones first, his favourite thing. He must still have some hope, even if it is only that his lamb cutlets will remain on the plate and not be vaporised by falling debris before he can suck them.