Shell

by Kristina Olsson

  They grimaced over weak tea. Jamie said: Serving the country here, Pearlie.

  Finally she had to concede.

  They wandered towards the car, each step slow, tentative. You sure you gotta go now, today? Will pouted, his face returned to the eight-year-old.

  Pearl kicked a front tire. I have to get this back to Jeanne. Matter-of-fact now, already girding herself, and she lowered her head, realizing. She softened. And you two have to sleep.

  They dug their hands in their pockets. Will grimaced. S’pose.

  As she threw her few things in through the back door: So when is all this nonsense happening, then? And turned to smile at them, her arms open.

  But when she slid into the car her whole body turned to lead. She twisted the key in the ignition, pushed the gear stick into first and moved off while her volition lasted. Raised her hand in farewell and drove. Still, the crying took her by surprise. It convulsed her chest and throat, unstoppable, releasing waves that blurred her vision, weakened her limbs. But she drove. Needing to. Realized too late that she’d taken a wrong turn—she was heading southeast, towards the coast. She slowed, wiped a sleeve across her face, got her bearings. To hell with it. She would just drive. Take the coast road. Longer, but no matter. So long as she was back by the morning.

  She was careful in Jeanne’s wheezing motor, pulling up when she thought of it to check its water and tires. Bega, Narooma. At Nowra she stopped to eat an early dinner at a Greek café: chops and eggs and lemony potatoes. Strong Greek coffee. Scraped the plate with bread and butter and realized she hadn’t eaten all day. Then drove to a beach to walk it off in the just-dark.

  The strip of sand was empty apart from the distant figures of a man and a dog. Too far up the beach to know if they were moving towards her or away, but the memory came unbidden of the conversation about Wanda Beach those weeks before. She dismissed it, walked deliberately as a man would. Deliberate as Della’s new boyfriend, pushing himself into her when she confessed she’d taken the new contraceptive pill. As if that was consent. But up ahead the figures were shrinking into distance and the night. Pearl slowed her pace, felt her muscles loosen. Looked up to the mess of stars, until all she could see was the Cross. Then turned back to the car.

  All the way to Sydney she could see only the shapes of two boys in swags, a dying fire, and the million-acre sky careering above them. Their eyes hunting the Cross, elusive as a dream. Until they saw the pointers, undeniable, flashing like a sign, and recognized the womanly shape, the head and feet and hips. A reliable mother, above them every night, reassuring, protective. A shuffle to east or west, up or down but the same Cross in any case, her meanings alive and bigger than she was. No wonder the boys sought her, Pearl thought, and no wonder that every Australian government, of every stripe, had kept her on the flag. The flag that flew them to governance, to servitude, to war. That validated everything.

  Night was evaporating when she pulled into the convent. She sat in the car and watched darkness leach from the horizon, her eyes gritty with the drive and the aftermath of crying. Sadness fought off anger and then swung back, until she could no longer read her own emotions, no longer knew what she felt. There was only an endless emptiness, a desolation, and the certainty of her own culpability. She pushed back the seat and closed her eyes.

  And woke to brightness, to the sound of a thousand car engines speeding people to town, to jobs. The stars had retreated, the sky already milky with winter sun. She felt bruised, her bones chilled. But as her eyes and ears adjusted, another sound, soft but insistent through the closed car windows. The bells were ringing.

  Pearl walked towards the path Jeanne would take to chapel. She was numb, hollowed out, but the bells pulled her like ropes thrown to the drowning, the sound coiling softly around her. She was once more the child craving touch, a consoling hand on her head or her arm. A voice that spoke forgiveness. Absolution. The path skirted the ancient graveyard and its bent, tired trees. Pearl moved slowly, her head down. The bells sharpened in the cold air, a chisel striking granite, and when she raised her eyes there was Jeanne stepping quickly between gravestones. Pearl stopped still on the path. As Jeanne neared her she lifted her hands to cover her face. What Jeanne would see there.

  August 1965

  He walked in new light towards the harbor, gray now like a whale’s back, quiet. Too early for breakfast at Noah’s, though Mrs. Jarratt, call me Olive, was up and making tea. Here love, she’d said, pushing a thick white cup towards him. He’d thanked her and stirred in sugar to make it drinkable—she seemed not to have heard of coffee—as he stood in the dim dining room with its square tables and sideboards, the stacked saucers and plates. Then he drained the cup, nodded, handed it back. Turned to the door. Good luck with it, she said to his back, Don’t let ’em give you any crap. The waking street, the damp footpath gave no clues to what she meant.

  From Bennelong Point he turned and looked towards the city. His back to the Heads. His eyes grazed color and contour: the sweep of green that was the gardens, stands of sandstone and concrete and rock. And the bridge. He could never stand on the point without feeling its pull, the audacity of its leap across water. The emotion of it. As if it spans time, he’d said to Pearl one day. And feeling, as well as space. You might be a different person at each end of it. Don’t you think? In just a glance. She’d only smiled at him in her maddening way, crossed her arms. But Axel knew the bridge across the harbor informed his work each day, the great bowl of water at his elbow, the miracle of steel and light in his eyes.

  The feeling dissipated later in the shed at Woolloomooloo. As he arrived the craftsmen were in conversation about Davis Hughes and his new arrangements with Utzon, whether the latest controversy would mean they themselves would not get paid. You could starve, one said over his shoulder as he passed a drawing to Axel. Axel frowned and held his eye. As he turned away the man said, Ah, just some bloody spat. Checkbook control or something.

  Axel called to Barry. What is a “spat,” what does it mean? Exactly what is this checkbook thing? His tongue made check into sheck.

  Barry grimaced and sighed. It means the government is taking control of Mr. Utzon’s pay, instead of the opera house committee. Means they can withhold payments whenever they feel like it. He pulled on his gloves and walked towards the kiln. Over his shoulder he said: No idea why they think he’ll take that lying down.

  The men gathered near the smaller prototypes they’d produced over the past month. There were still problems with proportion, with the contrast of textures, the transparent and the coarse. And ahead of them the technical challenges of producing the full-size piece, the length and tapering, the capture—the encapsulation—of light. Usually, Axel loved this part of the process. Loved the paradox, the uncertainty created by transparency, the illusions inherent in the glass, and its opposite effect, the rough, sandy surfaces. The contrast, the ambiguity, of two opposing states held within the one idea. Two ways of seeing reality, the deep truths within each.

  But now there were days when the glass was all he could manage. Was all that could save him. The darkness arrived without notice; today it was a bleak wash over his vision, across the very surface of his eyes. It coated everything, turned the world to a negative, black and white. The face of the architect came and went inside it. At these times he would work for hours without respite, his thoughts as viscous as new glass. There was the furnace and the fire. There was the inchoate and his hands, shaping. His arms, the cords of tendon, the muscle and blood. The bright bone of intention. He concentrated hard: this was the only way he could dilute the terror. The fear that lived in the bleak depths of the water and even the streets, the menace of their shadows and their variousness.

  If he could capture it like a sea monster. If he could contain it.

  For hours at a time, the rawness. He was turned inside out. Emotions not so much on his sleeve but stretched like a thin skin over bones, ghostly, permeable. Organs beating pink and gray beneath this transparent shea
th. Like the jellyfish he’d seen washed up after storms: they pulsed in the wash of waves, a mere blueness, beating. As if that’s all they were, these gelatin hearts. As if that’s all he was.

  At night, in his bed at the Mercantile, he dreamed of watery worlds and amphibious creatures, people at home in sea or lake or land. Of long ships, bark canoes, vessels that encapsulated life and death and the journey between them. Vessels of rescue and escape. That, upturned on a beach, could provide shelter from a storm. From the dark recesses of water, its subterfuge and strength, its promises. He would wake in terror of the shifting light of the harbor, its beguiling surface.

  He fought these feelings in himself. It was not, he knew, the way Utzon saw it. To him the clean light, the water, were creatures with benign intentions. So Axel worked on, ashamed, as if this feeling might be visible. Hid himself from view, so no one should know this about him. This duplicity, this darkness. His feelings betrayed all that Utzon himself felt and saw and said.

  These feelings rushed in with every new crisis around the opera house. It was the plywood for the ceilings now, the contract and its price. The government wanted tenders, the job offered to the cheapest bidder. To Axel, this was confounding. At home the best craftsmen would be consulted first, the cost negotiated as the process proceeded. Anyone could produce the cheapest price. But only one or two could produce the highest standards, the result of a lifetime of experience, of integrity. You always went to those who knew best.

  So many here did not see what Axel saw, or pretended they didn’t. The opera house was their second miracle; he was not sure they deserved it. The new government behaved as if the building was a millstone rather than a monument. A shining symbol of what might be. For months they’d pursued the architect on every point, from his pricing to his planning, humiliated him publicly and privately. Rejected his drawn plans for his own house in Sydney. Utzon’s own family house. The man had immigrated, brought his wife and children here; had designed a house for them to live in. To put down roots. This man who was leading them out of cultural darkness, who had been chosen for that reason.

  But in this country, he saw, it was a kind of sport to belittle those with vision, to treat art with disdain. He wasn’t sure what benefit it brought, but it had something to do with this flattening out, this shuffle towards sameness, to a life lived on the surface, without any depth. Was that why people clung so hard to the edges of the country, their backs to its beating red heart? Were they afraid to look in, to hear the old stories, to see what was inscribed on their own hearts and land?

  One day, Axel knew, he must see Utzon and tell him: the critics were blind. That the locals had no myths and therefore could not understand him or his building. Sometime in the future, they might. When they needed a symbol, a narrative that explained them, that stood for them, they would look to the opera house and see themselves. When he saw Utzon he would tell him: you cannot give up.

  Don’t take this on, Pearl. It isn’t yours. Suze leaned back on the bench and stretched her bare legs, her arms. The park was awash in late winter sun, the air clear and still; Suze had rolled up her loose pants and tilted her face skywards. Pearl was bound up in scarf and coat, and still her jeans felt too thin, as if all her skin was exposed, goosefleshed. She crossed her arms, tucked her hands beneath them. Of course it’s mine, she said. She looked steadily at the bare branches of a peppermint tree.

  Christ’s sake. The faint thread of impatience in Suze’s voice. You didn’t see them much for a few years. You think that changed everything, the whole course of their lives? Their personalities?

  Of course it did. It damaged them, turned them hard.

  They grew up. That’s all. Happens to us all, in case you hadn’t noticed.

  Suze. Pearl swiveled her body towards her friend. Fought for composure. Still her voice cracked open, her lips contorted to contain it. I was as good as their mother. The closest thing they had. So they lost her a second time. She looked away, fighting hard. Her body an edifice that might crumble at any minute. Then Suze’s warm hand was on her neck, and even this was too much, too kind. Her heart contracted, a fist in her chest.

  I fucking abandoned them, Suze, and they knew it. And they were kids. How do they deal with that? They turn themselves into different people, that’s how. Who can’t be hurt any more. Her voice broke on the words and she stopped. Pulled at threads on the old scarf. Tears that might be anger or might be grief pricked at her eyes. She sniffed.

  Suze produced a handkerchief. Ironed it myself, she said.

  Pearl held it to her face, but couldn’t feign a smile.

  I suppose you blame your mother for everything that happened to you. Suze pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around them.

  Pearl frowned. She died, Suze. She didn’t do it deliberately.

  No, she didn’t. But you. You hurt the boys deliberately. Sat down and worked it all out, the best way to cause them pain.

  Pearl pursed her lips.

  You gave up school for them, gave up your chances, your youth. Then you got a job you loved. Or weren’t you supposed to feel any joy? Suze stopped, looked at her sharply. Because your mother didn’t get to? Is that it?

  Don’t psychoanalyze me, Suze.

  For God’s sake. She dropped her arm around Pearl’s shoulders. You deserved a life. No one can predict how things will turn out. How people will think or react. Not even you.

  They sat in silence then as a light breeze picked up and sparrows picked at the ground around them. Occasional sounds drifted to them from King Street, a bike revving, a shout, the low bass of traffic. Pearl watched the birds and thought of her father, the magpies he fed in the early morning garden of her childhood, breadcrumbs scattered as he left for work. In his old man’s chair near the door now, the birds watched him, as if they knew. The word fidelity crept towards her with the sparrows.

  You know, darling—Suze lifted her arm and tipped her face to the sun once more, her voice slow, as if she was half asleep—it can be a bit self-indulgent, this self-blame. As if you’re the center of the world, all powerful, inflicting or withholding blows. Fixing stuff.

  Pearl had no reply. She stuck her hands in her jeans pockets, crossed her ankles. A sparrow had crept close to her boots and now startled away.

  But you’re not, and you can’t. Suze spoke to the sky. You’re just a feeble bloody human like the rest of us. You can’t cause calamities unless you try really hard, and you can’t fix ’em.

  You saying I’m on some sort of power trip? And enjoying it?

  I’m saying it’s strangely satisfying, putting yourself at the center of things. Seeing yourself as the cause of everything, bad or good. It’s playing God. And that’s the thing—if you’ve signed up for the wrongs, you also have to concede the rights. If you made them suffer you must also have made them happy. Sorry, but it’s true.

  Pearl swung around to look Suze in the eye. But Suze was ready. So pull yourself out of your hole.

  Those boys, Pearl said slowly, were born good. I was there, I saw it.

  They were born imperfect, as we all are.

  But Pearl was seeing their toddler bodies bent to the spinach leaves in the garden, Will’s palm turned up to show his brother the ladybug teetering there, his eyes shining. And later Jamie with his baby sister, crying when she did, and his plump hand on his mother’s, stroking. And it’s still there, she said. It’s obvious.

  Well. I rest my case. Suze lowered her feet, pulled herself upright. She was smiling. An odd, incalculable smile.

  Pearl was still, conceding nothing. Then she turned, lifted her arms, breathing in the herby smell of Suze’s hair, her skin. When she was away from her paints, Suze always smelled as if she’d grown from a patch of thyme and sage. Pearl leaned in, pressed her nose to Suze’s neck, and felt calmer somehow, earthed. If I had to pick you out of a lineup and I was blindfolded, she said, pulling away, I’d still know you in an instant.

  They stood and stretched. Suze said, I’d be the
one lecturing you. She tucked her arm through Pearl’s, and they walked off across the grass.

  When they reached Enmore Road Pearl stopped. You know what they said? Will and Jamie. They said it was the right thing to do. Signing up. Like cleaning their teeth at night or standing up for an old woman on the tram. A car cruised past, its driver’s elbow protruding, his eyes moving from the road to Suze and then to her. He raised his brows, puckered his lips into a silent whistle. How do you go from that to killing the commos?

  Suze shrugged. They’re probably polite in bed too. She smiled and raised her hand and walked off towards home.

  She caught a bus to Blue Skies straight from work the next day. Visiting wasn’t encouraged at that hour, when evening meals were almost finished and medications were administered. The staff favored late mornings, or mid-afternoons. They made it sound as if any appearance outside routine times might turn her father, or any one of them, into a crazed monster. Or worse, that he would be unsettled at bedtime. But Pearl knew the opposite was more likely. If she simply sat with him for half an hour, spoke about this and that, read aloud to him, he would be happy. The orderly would get him into bed. But she would smooth his sheets and blankets as he had once smoothed hers, stroke his forehead, sing softly as he had once done. “Black Velvet Band.” Then he’d sleep like a baby until morning.

  Several nurses eyed her as she came through the door. But they were too busy to remonstrate; one was urging an ancient man in a wheelchair to open his mouth, the others rattling medication trays. The odor of boiled cabbage hung in the room. Pearl went to the dining table where her father sat staring at his near-empty plate. Leaned over his shoulder, kissed his cheek. Hello, Da. She waited, her face against his, until she felt him relax. Then tilted her head around to meet his eyes. Got time for a brew? Odd how the rhythm of her speech tilted to Irish when she was with him. She was a ventriloquist, speaking for him, keeping his voice alive.