Much better to leave them alone for a bit, let them settle in. I suppose I’ll have to gird my loins, which are monumentally reluctant, and pay a duty call down the line. Drop something in, a quiche or a bottle of champagne? That’s the traditional welcome. Might it strike the right note, when it is a barefaced lie? Because I am not welcoming. I am not welcoming in the slightest degree.
For the moment I think I just can’t face seeing my house with other people in it. The thought makes me feel quite ill.
This will surely pass.
The aliens have landed. It could be the opening scene of a horror movie. What happens next? If it were up to me, if there were none of the restraining bonds of civilisation, what would I do? Without the constraints of a strict and sheltered upbringing, to what depths might I descend?
Lead us not into idle speculation, O fanciful lord.
One thing I must be very careful about: to make the boundaries quite clear from the start.
It was cool and windy today, and I went the full distance of our favourite walk, mainly so I didn’t have to go past my house. Teddy came all the way with me. He was firing on nearly all cylinders for a change, almost his old self. Touch wood, the injection and the new pills are working wonders.
Yesterday I had to drive by my house on my way to the village. Their car was parked outside. It looked new. A black Subaru. Even seeing it parked there was a violation. I couldn’t help seeing a few bits and pieces around too – chairs on the deck, flattened cardboard boxes, a girl’s bicycle. Signs of life. Signs of invaders’ lives.
We are not in a movie, however, and their occupation is not a violation in any way, shape or form. To write down such a word, even to think like that, is unacceptable behaviour. I wonder if a psychologist might think it verges on being dangerously unhinged behaviour. The house is not mine anymore, it is theirs. I may have brought it into being but it no longer belongs to me, or indeed has anything to do with me at all.
But the fact that I brought it into being and then lost it is like a hole in the heart. It remains in place. It cannot be filled.
Their house.
I made myself print that phrase, that incendiary pair of words, very slowly on the blackboard, three times. It is theirs now, yet I still feel there is an umbilical cord between us. I need to sever that cord. Begin the long process of disassociation.
The long process. How long will it take? How long is a piece of string? How long do I have?
It is absurd to think like this. Everyone has disappointments in their lives, and in the scheme of things this is a minor one. I am talking about a material possession. A house is an inanimate object, not a living thing. A large part of the trouble, I realise, is that it was like a living thing to me. I brought it into being from nothing, and I suppose for me it symbolised a new life. The chance of a new beginning, long delayed. The chance, as they like to say, to reinvent myself.
Which at my age must be manifestly absurd.
When I saw the van move in I felt a physical ache. As if there had been a death and I’d only just found out. Well, that is in character, I’m afraid. I was slow on the uptake in my previous life, was I not? The emotional uptake, if there is such a thing.
Reinvention. To reinvent. Before, we never talked in such a way about ourselves, but it’s common now and rather useful, I think. It was in my own eyes that I wanted to reinvent myself; it had nothing to do with the eyes of others. I don’t care what others think of me, and never have.
If I were to be really pretentious I’d say it was to do with a rehabilitation of the sense of self. Because – I’ll say it here but nowhere else – my sense of self was dismantled. It may be a long time ago now, a great many years have passed, but damage was done. Profound damage that lingers on.
It taught me that everyday life is a bit like wading into the sea. You may not see the hidden depths or the treacherous rips, but you know they are there. Experience has taught you that they are always there.
I wouldn’t go on like this to a person, to an animate Homo non-sapiens, but on the blank, accepting screen you can go the whole hog, as Oscar puts it. A blank computer page accepts anything you type onto it, every incendiary thought – the sea, their house – that comes into your mind. Oscar is right, it is curiously liberating. I could get addicted to it if, indeed, I had an addictive personality, and I doubt if I’ve ever shown any tendencies there.
But I don’t think I’ve ever been a particularly acquisitive person either, so it’s a shock to have such a violent reaction to losing a possession. It’s even more illogical since I received good money for it. Money that should, with any luck, unless things escalate into a major world depression, enable me to live in modest comfort for the rest of my days.
I say a possession, but it occurs to me that in a way it was the other way round. The idea of the house possessed me, and good can never come out of that, can it? I might of course win the lottery next week. Wouldn’t that be a thing. Could I persuade them to sell it back for a profit? Should I jettison the habit of a lifetime and splash out on a ticket?
I hope I am not turning into a materialistic, embittered old trout. Or do I? Who cares? Who gives a fuck, as they so tediously say? I’m sure Teddy doesn’t. He doesn’t want me to reinvent myself, let alone rehabilitate my damaged sense of self. It’s not damaged to him, he loves me whatever I’m like.
He anticipates my habits. We know each other’s little ways. We two creatures, so different-looking, have an unconditional love for each other.
I should get a grip, whatever that is, and make myself go round later. There’s no need to cross the invaders’ threshold. I can go, dump the bottle at the door and come back without taking a single step inside.
I fear it is up to me to make the initial gesture. And if I do that I can also lay down the ground rules in a relatively tactful way. So what are they? Number one: we do not drop in. If we want to contact each other, we telephone first. The fact that we’re near neighbours and isolated here makes it all the more important to respect each other’s privacy.
However, I don’t yet know their phone number. The gesture must be made, the conscience money delivered. There is no alternative but to let the drawbridge down and trudge across the moat on this occasion. I’ll make a point of apologising, make it clear that I regard coming to their door as an intrusion and wouldn’t normally do it, nor do I intend to make a habit of it. I can ask for their number, for future reference. That will be a smooth way of introducing the subject.
Basically, it boils down to one ground rule, and it has to be hard and fast. We’re on pleasant terms, but for the most part we leave each other well alone.
Ha. That plan came to naught. I was pre-empted. I got back from the village this morning with the paper and milk to find a note on the mat. It was sitting under a wooden wombat, one of those carved ones from the shop at the top of the Leura mall.
Dear Ms Farmer,
If you are around this evening, and if you feel inclined, please join us for a house-warming drink any time after six. If you can’t make it, any other night this week would be fine for us – as long as you don’t mind the mess …!! You could let us know by wombat mail.
From Ellice Carrington and Frank and Kim Campbell. P.S. We would be extra-pleased if you could bring your lovely Red Cattle Dog, so we can meet him or her!
Kim Campbell’s name was encircled by a line drawing of a wombat. Rather well done, but the note was written in an extremely badly taught, childish hand. It sloped at random, left and right, with lots of whorls and loops. It would be the girl’s writing, of course, hence the ‘extra-pleased’ and the capitals and exclamation marks. At least she didn’t show up in person at the door. They must have waited to send her over until they saw me drive past.
The ‘if you feel inclined’ bit didn’t sound like the girl, though. I expect her mother dictated that.
I heard the sound of their car going off not long afterwards, so I scrawled an impulsive acceptance on the end and took
it across. There was music coming from the house – a Gershwin song, oddly enough, from my childhood – and I was resigned to seeing one of them, but didn’t, and was able to return note and wombat to the kitchen door unobserved.
The song was called ‘Love Walked In’. And how ironic. I might have shed a bitter tear, were I the crying kind.
I need not have done it. I needn’t have said I would come. It was a perfect opportunity to write a note to the effect that I was busy. It might have strained credibility, though, to say I was busy every night of the coming week. I suppose I wasn’t prepared to be quite that offensive. They have made the gesture, I should force myself to make the best of it.
Our relations need to be distant, but cordial. Best to grit the teeth and get it over with.
On the dot of six we went over. It was a balmy evening and they had put out chairs on the western deck. The door was flung open, and as we approached I could see the couple in the kitchen. He was standing on a stool while she handed him things to put on the high shelves. There were garbage bags full of crumpled newspaper. Music, some singer with a guttural voice. Bob Dylan? Is he still alive, or did he die of an overdose? I saw a jumble of boxes through the door into the living room, though I was trying not to look. The long, soaring room I used to think of as the house’s crowning glory.
They greeted me with a show of warmth. She switched the gravelly voice off, and he hustled me outside and onto an incongruous dining chair with a red satin seat. The unpleasant Queen Anne kind you sit on and not in.
They had been Ellice’s parents’ dining room chairs, he explained. Antiques. Way too stuffy for him and Ellie, but they’d been landed with the entire set of ten – ten, Ms Farmer, can you believe it? – and a table the size of a footy ground when her parents downsized. They’d be getting rid of them as soon as her parents lost their memory, he said, gazing skywards, which would hopefully be next week.
After saying that he darted a furtive glance at me. And meanwhile, he continued hurriedly, they’d be on the lookout for some cane seating for the deck. Or wicker – like the funky old chairs they’d noticed on my front verandah. Could I suggest some junk shops?
I had a glass of nice cold Möet placed in my hand before I could say anything. Vintage, first of a case sent by Ellice’s dad as a house-warmer, he said. They’d gone to some trouble. The daughter, Kim, followed the mother out silently with a tray of nuts, dips and biscuits. A coffee table, a fussy number with shapely bow legs – the parents again? – was placed at my elbow.
They were most insistent that I shouldn’t set eyes on the rest of the house, not until everything was unpacked and straightened out. They said it would be too upsetting.
‘Your wondrous creation, turned into a pigsty,’ Ellice said. ‘You’d never forget how it looked and never forgive us.’
That touched me, briefly. They do seem to understand, at some primitive level.
The girl sat quietly on the deck next to Teddy. She had a book but spent most of the time obsessively patting and stroking him. He lapped that up, of course. She was given a splash of champagne topped up with orange juice. Like her parents, she must be older than I first thought. Eleven or twelve, perhaps. She has her mother’s colouring, in an intensified version. Very straight, dark hair, with an alice band. Almost blue-black hair cut short in a boyish crop, unlike Ellice’s long waves. Olive skin, whereas her father is a classic paleface with thick, tightly furled gingery hair, worn longish. She does have his distinctive turned-up nose, however, but not his hazel eyes or freckles.
She presents as a shy, withdrawn child who hardly says a thing. Scrawny, caught in that awkward hiatus between childhood and adolescence. She calls them by their first names. They probably think that’s cutting edge. It always sounds a trifle odd to me.
The occasion called for small talk. It reminded me of meeting young parents I had nothing in common with. I told them I was impressed that they had managed to locate the champagne glasses from the chaos.
Ellice said that was Frank’s idea. ‘He insisted on bringing them in the car with us so we could have you over on our first night to celebrate. Then he wouldn’t let me do it. He put his patriarchal foot well and truly down, didn’t he, Kimmie?’
‘You were well and truly whacked, sweetheart,’ Frank said, patting her arm. The next night they were catatonic from the unpacking and could only face takeaway pizza.
‘We’ve been catatonic from the unpacking ever since,’ Ellice said. ‘Haven’t we, Kimbo?’
The glasses were works of art: elegant, trumpet-shaped flutes engraved with kookaburras, cockatoos and waratahs. A wedding present, they informed me, and majorly phenomenally – not that we want to alarm you, Ms Farmer, don’t even blink if you smash yours into a thousand pieces on the deck – they had not managed to break one in three years. I handled mine with mild paranoia after that. The set was made by a local artist I’ve never heard of, a woman whose studio is in a cave near Lithgow. They offered to take me there some time.
If they’ve had the glasses for three years, that means they married when their daughter was nine, or thereabouts.
There were no awkward silences. I was civil, calm and collected. I was quite proud of myself. We talked a bit about the area. And an inordinate amount about the ubiquitous ‘stuff’. Where they should do stuff, and where they should go for stuff. And we talked about my house – their house – for some length of time too. I had my back to it but I was always aware of it there, presiding in my shadow.
They were curious to know where I’d sourced the materials. Pleased all the timber was recycled, commented on the leadlight windows and old panelled doors with porcelain handles. Good on me, though, for installing modern plumbing as well as an almost state-of-the-art kitchen. It spoke to them, they said, having the old and the new thrown together like that.
In what way it spoke to them they didn’t say. Almost state-of-the-art? What more do they want?
I shouldn’t be such a sourpuss. They were doing their best.
He stood up and proposed a toast. ‘This is the house that Ms Farmer built.’ He proclaimed this as if to a massive throng concealed in the surrounding bush. ‘We feel very lucky and honoured to be here. Ms Farmer, and you too, Teddy: here’s to your health and happiness.’
Even then I didn’t bat an eyelid. Their sullen child was cajoled into the happy chorus. I was reminded of the old children’s chant, this is the house that Jack built, this is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built, this is the rat that ate the malt, and so on.
‘And here’s to the three of you, and your new life here,’ I added gamely. Gamely, and lamely.
They were lucky and honoured to be there, he said. How very true. At least they seemed to be aware of it. Blissfully unaware, of course, that their good fortune came at the expense of my bad luck. Or rather, my atrociously bad judgement.
They didn’t mention the magic ingredient that got them there. It was their moolah, had they known it, that paid off the almost state-of-the-art kitchen. Money and timing, the two magic ingredients. Good timing doesn’t receive due recognition, yet I suppose that is what luck is, most of the time.
When he heard himself toasted Teddy looked at me, thumping his tail on the deck. There we were, the two of us, on a summer evening. Sitting in golden air scented with eucalyptus. Sitting under the tall, luminous trees outside the house that should have been ours. The two of us, who should have been in our own domain enjoying our own company in blessed solitude, instead of making stilted small talk with three barely tolerated strangers. It was as if we were the intruders, not them.
I had managed quite well up to that point, until that thought engulfed me like a cloud of poison gas. It threatened to undermine my composure far more than the stab of hostile envy that accompanied it.
Teddy and I took our leave rather abruptly, I realise. And it completely slipped my mind to ask for their phone number. But we had stayed an hour and fifteen minutes. That is perfectly legitimate, for pre-dinner
drinks. I even went to the lengths of setting up a return arrangement. It sounded automatic and inane, like the social convention that it is.
They’re invading the hovel for a drink next weekend. Saturday. I’d better write it down on the blackboard so I do not suppress it.
And why on absent god’s earth did I bother to do that? Ingrained good manners? A morbid attraction to martyrdom? Surely I am of an age and inclination to be past doing something because it happens to be polite. Long past it. Perhaps Frank’s frequent top-ups of his father-in-law’s unusually good champagne had mellowed me in spite of everything. Made me weak in the head.
They jumped up with alacrity. No doubt they were as glad to get rid of us as we were to go.
I don’t feel like dealing with them on my own. Perhaps I should line up some reinforcements for Saturday. Which sounds as if I have legions to choose from, when there’s barely a scratch team. Is there anyone from my meagre hockey team of mates they might like to meet? Or who would consent to meet them, more to the point?
They’re not all like me. Some of them profess to enjoy parties. Davy Messer, for example. I believe the old Davy genuinely likes meeting new people, strange though it sounds. Especially if they’re young and glamorous, and what he still insists on calling hip. He hopes some of it will rub off on him. Some hope.
Ellice should go down well. Does Frank Campbell qualify? He’s not conventionally handsome but he’s young, and he has a certain foxy appeal. They’re bright and well-educated, or as much as you can hope for these days. They might find the old Davy a bit of a giggle. He’s a cultured little luvvie, even if he is pocket-sized and a bit clapped out. I hope his breath’s all right. It tends to go off when he hasn’t been to the dentist for a while.
The Precipice Page 2