‘Fil de lin? Vintage, yes?’
The woman arched a dark eyebrow. ‘Oui.’
‘Double? Queen?’
Confusion crossed the woman’s face. Then a muddled explanation of European sheet sizing, both of them using hands and arms for measures.
‘Prix, s’il vous plait?’
The price was exorbitant, even for such quality. A negotiation took place between them. Liz smiled, feeling her mind stretch into the language. The shop assistant’s attitude thawed as she sensed a sale in the offing. Somewhere along the line, the sheets changed hands, wrapped in mauve tissue and placed in a glossy carry bag. She left the salon elated, laughing as they walked back to the hotel in the gloom of yellow street lights.
‘I didn’t know you spoke French.’ Pete walked a step or two behind, hands dug into his pockets.
‘I haven’t for ages. I thought she had me there for a while.’ Liz reached back for his hand, but he pulled away. ‘Are you angry about something?’
‘No. I just thought you knowing another language was something I would have known about by now.’
‘Are you kidding?’ She turned to look at him.
His face was closed.
‘Pete? I haven’t spoken French since high school. Surely, this can’t be a problem for you.’
‘Of course not. I’m surprised is all.’ He squeezed her shoulder. ‘You can be my little French maid.’
She cringed at the image he’d conjured. They walked the rest of the way in a strained silence that lingered until they showered and made their way towards the small restaurant they had spotted earlier in the day.
‘So, how much were they?’ Pete poured wine from the bottle the waiter had left after their tasting.
‘What?’
‘The sheets. How much did you pay?’ He slid her glass across the cloth, candlelight glinting on their new rings.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Is it a secret?’
She took a sip of merlot. ‘They cost a lot. But I paid for them, so why is this an issue?’
‘No issue.’ He held up his hands as though under attack. ‘Do whatever you want with your money.’
They ordered and ate dinner, talked in a desultory way about their plans for the next day. The Louvre? A river cruise? But their hearts weren’t in it, and they left without making concrete plans.
That night, for the first time on the trip, they didn’t make love. Pete said he was exhausted, but it felt like punishment.
After they had returned home, Liz washed the heavy linens and hung them out in the sunshine of a Sydney summer’s day before making up the bed. Pete couldn’t sleep, the linen scratched him.
‘You’re like the Princess and the Pea.’
‘What?’ He tossed back the quilts and headed for the shower.
The next morning, she remade the bed with a grim resolve, replacing the linen set with ordinary printed cottons, airing the French sheets outside again before packing them away with a sachet.
*
Across the years, their patterns of behaviour had become ingrained. Months could go by with both of them skimming the surface of companionship, all undone on occasion by a wrong word, a misstep, a silence. Like actors with different scripts and only one stage to perform on, it became increasingly obvious that they had overstayed their run.
Pete’s method of problem-solving was to walk away from conflict and sulk in silence; hers to talk things through, to draw closer and dig out the splinter. Gradually, it had become easier to avoid conversation of any depth. They entertained a lot, were better in company.
As their tenth anniversary drew near and the idea of a celebration became pressing, it seemed neither of them felt there was anything much to celebrate. In the face of his ambivalence, she decided on a quiet dinner out where they could push expensive food around their plates and struggle to fill the gaps between the ordering and arrival of courses.
She booked a table by the window in a Greek restaurant they had frequented early in their relationship. On arrival, it became apparent the business had changed hands; there were modern touches now and the netting had been removed from the ceiling. Reassuringly, the table they were led to was the same, with a view out onto the busy street outside. Pete pulled a chair out for her, and she hung her bag on the chair back. They sat in silence while the wine was poured, Pete keeping his arms folded and eyes on the streetscape outside.
‘What do you feel like ordering?’ she said.
‘Whatever you want.’
The meal came and was better than she’d expected, though the atmosphere between the two of them left a sour taste in her mouth. She ordered another glass of wine.
‘One for you too?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. Why not?’ he said churlishly.
Liz looked at his familiar face across the table, feeling numb. ‘It’s not working is it?’
‘What?’
‘You, me. Us.’
‘Don’t start.’ He stared at the snowy cloth, running the hem repeatedly through his fingers. Everything about him seemed cold.
‘Pete?’
‘Just don’t.’ He motioned to the waiter. ‘Let’s just finish up.’
She didn’t know if he meant the meal or their relationship.
It was raining when they left the restaurant, both of them wet by the time they reached the car. They drove part of the way in solid silence as rain streamed over the windscreen, the wipers slashing across the glass.
She couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Do you want to talk about this?’
Hunched over the steering wheel, Pete said nothing.
‘You could at least try and answer me.’
‘What’s the point?’ Pete flicked on the indicator. ‘You’d only argue with anything I say.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘See? That’s exactly what I mean. You can’t ever let things slide.’
‘I don’t think letting things slide solves anything. Communication does.’ She chewed at her bottom lip, frustrated at the both of them. ‘Why can’t we just talk without being nasty?’
‘I don’t know why,’ he said, as he turned into the driveway and pressed the remote for the garage door. ‘You know, I don’t think I care why anymore.’
Pete got out and went inside. He didn’t look to see if she was coming, just closed the door behind him. Liz sat in the car, stunned at his words, before following him. She thought he might have locked her out, but when she tried the door, it opened as silently and smoothly as always. Pete was in the kitchen pouring himself a wine.
‘Do you think you need more wine?’ she said.
‘Yes, I do. Is there a problem with that?’
She went to retrieve a glass from the cabinet and poured herself a drink, then leant back against the benchtop they’d chosen together in better days, running a hand over the smooth surface.‘I still love this marble. It fits perfectly.’
‘You should,’ he said. ‘It’s what you wanted.’
‘We both chose it,’ she said, stung.
‘No, Liz. You chose it. Just like you choose everything.’ He finished his wine and put the glass by the sink. ‘Do you know what it’s like living with someone who has to have their own way all the time?’
She thought back over the million small compromises she’d made. She felt as though she’d been bending over backwards for years. How had they misread each other?
‘Is that what you think?’ she said. ‘That I need to have my own way?’
‘It drives me crazy. Everything. I don’t even try anymore.’
‘No,’ she said, suddenly tired. ‘No, you don’t try, Pete. I’m going to bed.’
‘Suit yourself.’
Liz went up the stairs and changed. Wiping the makeup off her face, she stared at herself in the mirror. Who were they now? There were no easy answers. In the morning, she would try to breach the walls they had built. Now, she needed to sleep.
His movement in the bedroom woke her sometime late
r, a dark shape in the room, a pair of jeans in his hand, duffel bag at the end of the bed.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, half asleep.
‘Leaving.’ He shoved the jeans into the bag.
‘What? Can’t we talk about this?’
He shook his head and kept moving between the wardrobe and the bed, where the bag had spilled its contents across the spread.
She sat up. ‘Pete? What about our parents? What am I going to tell them?’
‘Tell them whatever you want. You will, anyway.’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘Life’s unfair.’ He bunched a pullover, added it to the pile, and tugged at a reluctant zip.
‘Just like that?’
The zip ripped closed. Pete turned back, one hand on the door jamb.
‘Just like that,’ he said.
There was the clatter of car keys being grabbed from the blue glass bowl on the hall table. A gift for her thirtieth birthday and custodian of their mutual detritus ever since. She thought it might have given him pause, but as usual, it was easier for him to say nothing and walk away. The garage door opened, and rolled down seconds later. Headlights past the bedroom window. Silence.
The hour between three and four in the morning holds the longest minutes, and she felt each of them as they ticked away. She sat up in bed, sleep a million miles away now. There would be endless details to sort out. Money, mortgage, things. The long list of how and why spun round in her mind. She lay down and stared at the ceiling, trying to relax, but failing.
Liz got up and walked to the laundry, pausing to pick up a sock Pete had dropped in his haste to be away. An unseemly rush, for someone unable to make any sort of definite decision during the long, slow decline of their marriage. She pulled out set after set of sheets and towels from the linen press until she found what she wanted.
The thick creamy linen was heavy, and though the fabric held weight, she carried it easily. She stripped the bed in the half-dark, threw the old bedding into the hamper with ill grace and remade the bed with the antique French sheets, chosen for her own delight, stored away all these years, unseen. The weight of them pressed down on her as she folded her body into the bed, feet stretching down through the smoothness, arms tight across her chest. There would be time, later, to sort everything out. When the sun was up and life held out its promises again.
Her throat was tight with tears a long time coming, and she pushed her face into the pillow, gripping the edge of the mattress to hold herself in place. The bed was soft, and the comfort there eventually overrode both muscle and mind. She felt herself drift away, untethered, lying in the embrace of her beautiful sheets. The gentle grace of their bygone warp and weft a choice all her own, as they would all be now. Breathing in the scent of lemons, she let the darkness take her.
Two-Four Time
Nan’s missing foot was partly severed by a badly aimed axe swung by Grandad, out wooding one long-ago Sunday. They lived in their weatherboard surrounded by giant trees down south, where the winters got bone-deep cold and the wood fire stayed on day and night. They were tall timber people, wouldn’t live anywhere else. As soon as the cold started to bite, Grandad would lay in a pile of cut wood, neatly stacked in the yard and ready for splitting. That particular year, the rain had set in early, and on the first clear day, Grandad had insisted on getting the wood. Nan, just as much, wanted to go to church. They both had a fierce stubborn streak, easily ignited.
We never heard the full story of exactly how the accident happened. We knew about the ride to the hospital in the old Bentley, every pothole and corner, and the subsequent amputation. She never did come out and say it, even once Grandad was gone, but we got the feeling that Nan didn’t entirely believe that swing was misaligned. Somehow, they had managed to get through that sad deep-forest winter together and all those that followed.
Now, we were all gathered around Nan’s bedside, three generations of proof, watching her rasp in and out. It is true that there can be some impatience even in the middle of great sadness. There had been quick sorties out to the chip machine in the corridor more than once, and people coming back with cigarette smoke still trailing and the smell of rain on their coats. It didn’t seem right she was dying here and not at home in the tall forest where she’d lived so long and nimbly.
‘Where’s your foot?’
Only cousin Morris would say such a thing. Even though he was standing behind me, I could tell it was him by his weedy voice, the dusty smell of his lumber jacket. He had always been clumsy with his mouth. And he had eyes that were too close together. Mum said it came from the Withers side, which was not her side. They did have a tendency that way.
Nan turned her face from the window, the grey light showing up a few white hairs on her chin. A thin crust lay around her lips, like frost-rind on a winter puddle. Her eyes were dark, maybe a bit close together, but she was no more like Morris than she had to be.
‘That you, Morris?’ Nan said.
‘Yep.’
I heard his feet shift on the lino behind me.
‘Thought so.’
I felt a bit sorry for him, but not much. I’ve got nicer cousins, but it’s not like he could help the way he was. I tried to squeeze my eyes together like a Withers, but it made everything blurry, and I looked out the window at the wet car park to set them straight again.
‘I lost that foot out wooding in ’42, you know that, Morris. We were supposed to be in church. I told him so. I told him more than once. He had a temper that man…’
‘I meant the wooden foot.’
There he went again. No-one could ever say Morris didn’t try hard when he wanted to find something out.
Nan tried to raise her head off the pillow but couldn’t quite make it. Her eyes pinned Morris to the wall over my shoulder, and I was glad I wasn’t him. I was glad, too, that I hadn’t been Grandad maiming her foot with the axe all those years ago.
‘Never you mind about that foot.’ She closed her eyes. I could see her eyeballs shifting around behind their lids. Nan was thinking hard. ‘You going to play that accordion for me sometime, Rosie?’
‘I will soon, Nan,’ I said. ‘I have it right here.’ I felt like crying more than playing, but there was a time for everything.
‘You keep a good hold of it now. Your grandad gave it to me, you know, right after…’
‘I will, Nan.’
I remembered Grandad clearly because he wasn’t someone a child was likely to forget. He never talked much, but he could whistle every bird call in the area, and those birds, way up in the trees, would whistle right back. Nan was right, he did have a temper when he’d had enough of anything, and I don’t know about that axe swing.
He’d once made a spring-loaded contraption out of bits of wood and wire that delivered the workings of Nan’s hens straight to the kitchen windowsill. It was a marvel to us kids when we stayed there over the holidays.
‘Egg there by the sill, Pru,’ he’d say.
‘Well, Henry,’ Nan would answer. ‘I’d go get it if I still had both my feet.’
Grandad never tired of that contraption and couldn’t help but announce each egg as it wobbled up to the windowsill. It wasn’t so good in the rain because opening the window let water run in from the gutter all along the sink.
When Nan got cranky about the water everywhere, he’d say, ‘Everything should have at least one flaw, or there’d be nothing much to aim towards.’
‘Plenty of flaws around here,’ she’d say right back at him.
We kids fought over getting the eggs to save Nan clumping across the floor, but Morris ended up breaking the egg machine, anyway.
After the accident, while Nan was learning to walk again, Grandad had carved her a new foot to replace the one she’d lost. He made it from the tree they’d been chopping at the time. Marri holds a beautiful grain when it’s all polished up. That Christmas, he bought her a piano accordion to make up for the damage done.
Nan played that acco
rdion at all the local dances. They were a big thing back then. All the timber towns had a hall, butted up into a hillside or crouching in some forest clearing by a river. Those little places were draughty and ramshackle, but they did everything a small town needed them to. Some of the church services were held there, hymns floating out of the open windows. In springtime, there might even be a wedding or two. Come summer, it was the fire station.
Once a month or so, the hall would transform itself, strung with Chinese lanterns bobbing in the evening breeze. Women arrived in frocks that swung and frothed, their white gloves arranging the table of scones and sponges. Nan would be there by the piano with her accordion. She could hold time to any country band, and she played along with many. She liked the waltzes best. Dancing is always easier with a clear two-four time to follow. Most of life is, really.
She’d learnt how to play by ear and from watching her own father. Nan never talked about him. He passed away long before I was born. In the few old photos from back then, his face is a closed-up fist ready to swing. Whenever his name came up, she’d go quiet and look at Grandad with soft eyes.
‘I rescued you, Pru,’ Grandad would say. ‘Don’t go forgetting that.’
‘I won’t.’
I don’t remember how I first heard of it. It’s one of those things family members just know. Same as how we know Aunt Flora is Uncle Horrie’s sister, but not completely. Like the way Grace’s boys all tuck their hands under their armpits when they’re lying, or how Morris’s dad, my uncle Dan, can’t laugh out loud since their baby girl died in his arms, and just has a one-sided sad sort of smile, no matter how funny things get. And that all the girls on my mother’s side born with a good mop of curly hair tend to choose men who bring them nothing but grief. Those little details don’t show up on the surface, but it’s stuff we all know.
Like Nan’s foot being stuffed with cash.
Nan never put that wooden foot by the bed. She wrapped it every night in a piece of creamy old linen, with her back turned to the door, and hid it someplace. In the morning, the wooden foot would tap lightly on the kitchen floor on the end of her spindly leg. I don’t know how many times we had tried to see where it went when we were kids, but we never did catch where she put it.
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