Once upon a time Tildy’s father had owned this place, but that counted for nothing now.
Merridy heard a voice say: “You won’t hear the telephone ring in that!”
“I couldn’t see you,” Tildy apologised, bursting free. She put two glasses full of something down on the table. “That’ll give a spurt to our juices.”
She subsided onto the stool and clinked glasses. “To us.”
Merridy reached out, happy to see her again. She did not normally drink alcohol. But she had finished her tomato juice and the hot, smoky room made her thirsty.
“To us,” and swallowed. “Mmm. What is it?”
“What you used to serve me. Rum and tonic. Oh, I’ve wiped myself a couple of times on that, I can tell you–between Captain Morgan’s and Bacardi. I don’t do it any more. Not since I’ve been off the slops. But tonight I will make an exception.” Tildy crossed two thick legs beneath the India cotton dress. And looked directly at Merridy. “Well?”
“How was the Breast Bus?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” shrugged Tildy and clutched at her bosoms which moments before a disaffected Canadian nurse had rested on cold glass plates. “She was so bored she might have been arranging fruit. They’re bloody freezing still.”
“Lump free?”
“Think so–you ought to nip in. Anyway, I have plenty of other things to worry about. Plenty.” Tildy poked around in her handbag. “Thank God, you can still smoke in here.”
She put a scuffed paperback onto the table and then a packet of cigarettes.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” Merridy said.
Tildy shrugged. “I just lied on the mammogram questionnaire. Why, do you want one?”
“No.”
Tildy tapped one out for herself and went on ferreting in her bag. “At school, I have to stand out in the yard,” in a voice distorted by the cigarette between her lips. “But not for much longer.”
“What, are you giving that up?”
“Certain aspects of my daily intake are no longer satisfied by catering. I want to do something for myself.”
“Like what?”
Very seriously, Tildy said: “You’re not to laugh, but I am toying with the idea of going into politics.”
“Politics,” Merridy repeated, wondering if she had misheard.
“Now don’t you sound like that, Merridy Bowman Dove. You are looking at the person who organised our entry for last year’s Tidy Town competition. In which, may I remind you, Wellington Point came proximay something or other.” She leaned forward. “I’m going to put my name down for the council election in April. Listen, it makes sense. I know everyone. I’ve fed them all. They can vote for me. At the very least, I’d make a better politician than Ray.”
It all seemed odd to Merridy. “Tell me, how’s Zac?” falling back on a more reliable subject. In the past, when the two cousins had had nothing to say to each other, they would talk about Tildy’s children.
Tildy winced. “Later.” But unable to restrain herself, she plucked the unlit cigarette from her mouth. “It was his birthday on Tuesday. Guess how old he is? How old do you think Zac is?”
“He must be—”
“Fifteen!”
“Fifteen…And Montana?” Merridy said quickly, to tide her over the fact that she had forgotten Zac’s birthday.
“Just started grade eight.”
“Alex loves Montana.”
“Everyone loves Montana,” with that blend of pride and resentment which mothers reserve for daughters who seem to enjoy greater luck with the opposite sex than they can remember having had themselves. “Shit, I was in such a hurry to leave the house I left my lighter behind. I’ll get a match.”
While she waited for Tildy, Merridy rotated the paperback so she could read the title. The Shadow Line, with mild surprise. The girl she knew from Ulverstone was not merely politically illiterate but voraciously unread. Interested only in magazines like New Idea. Who whenever she saw someone reading a book felt impelled to distract them.
“I started it on the Breast Bus,” Tildy explained, resettling herself. “I remember Alex discussing it.” It had stayed with her, his expression as he talked about the book. His concentration fastened on the mystery in his hand that Tildy could not hope to match by undressing. But the passion with which he spoke had made her want to glimpse it for herself, even if it had taken her all this time.
“What do you think of it?” Merridy asked.
“There’s a bit of packing. But all writers use packing. Have to make up the numbers. But you just skip and keep on going,” and drew on her cigarette.
“I’d no idea you liked Conrad.” And yet Merridy had known that there were seams in her.
“Sweetie, you’d know a heap more about me if you bothered to ask. It’s all I do now, read.” She looked for somewhere to put the dead match before squeezing it under the wrap of her cigarette packet. “Reading gives you four eyes.”
“When did this happen?”
“It might have happened a darn sight earlier if you and Alex had got your fingers out. Remember I was thinking of joining Agnes’s reading group?”
Now Merridy did. “That’s right. And we were going to write you a list. Oh, Tildy, I’m sorry.”
“You never gave me a solitary title, either of you,” Tildy scolded. “So in the end I was left to make the discovery for myself.” She took in a long draught and blew out the smoke through her nostrils, smiling. “I’ll tell you and you won’t believe it. That New Year when you looked after the children?”
“When you and Ray went to Coles Bay?”
“That’s right, for our fuckathon,” and her eyes sparkled at the irony. “Well, Ray drank too much and afterwards fell asleep on top of me. Next morning he went out to fish. I was so bored and upset. That’s when I found this paperback under the bed. A Fringe of Leaves. Well, I didn’t have a clue what it was, it could have been a gardening book, but I read the first page, for something to do, I suppose, and flicked through the pages to see if they were the same colour. Anyway, when Ray came back with his flat-head and his kisses I was still reading. At last, I had an idea of what so excited you and Alex. Merridy, I never understood before. It was more exciting than anything Ray could offer. It meant that I had something to occupy myself when he woke up next morning with kidney stones, and we had to rush to Hobart in the ambulance.” She coughed. “Smoking, it’s worse than snakebite,” and took a sip to quell her throat. “Actually, over the years I’ve meant to ask you for books to borrow.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I thought you’d laugh at me. But it’s one of the reasons I haven’t been out and about so much.” She put down her glass and cast her eyes around. “In fact, this is the first time I’ve been in here since Dad died.”
“I don’t think I’ve been here since my wedding reception.”
“It’s where Ray always comes,” Tildy said.
“How is Ray?” Still trying to accommodate the novelty of Tildy the Reader. “I heard he was in the Louisa Meredith.”
“Only with a minor concussion. I suppose you know what my fat-head of a husband did? Smashed his Follow bloody Me all over the boat ramp. Mark you, he learned this morning he’ll get 120 per cent of the cost of the frigging thing from the insurance. And did you hear? He’d been bloody warned not to go out that afternoon and he told this very kind English gentleman to go and pee all over himself. The pity of it is that he didn’t get drowned himself…”
“Oh, Tildy, you can’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do.” The weight of her body made the stool squeak.
“I see his name everywhere. The David Boon of real estate.”
Tildy nodded. “Listen to him and he’s single-handedly responsible for the property boom!”
From the street came the sound of a car horn and the scream of brakes.
“Bloody bogans,” someone muttered.
A girl giggled, the enthusiastic giggle of the marijuana smoker.
Tildy cradled her glass with both hands and grew thoughtful. “I meant to say this before. You were right about Ray.”
“What makes you say that?” doing her best to remember whatever it was she might have said.
“The way he carries on. He’s changed, Merridy,” and bit her lip. “Or maybe he is what he always was and only you had the smarts to see it.”
“Maybe he’s under pressure at work?”
Tildy sipped at her rum. “Only pressure I’m aware of is from other women’s cleavages.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes,” and made a motion with her glass. “Only yesterday I’m having my hair coloured and he comes in and starts carrying on with the hairdresser, who used to work in his office. So there he is, talking to his buxom, hard-headed friend, not knowing it’s me sitting across the room with Glad wrap about my head. He’s probably been shagging her on the floor of the Bethel or wherever he’s meant to be selling.”
“Tildy, you don’t have proof.”
“Don’t think she’s the only one.” Tildy blew out smoke. Cooling the hot dish of her anger. And all at once looked oppressed. “I think one of his tarts has had a baby,” in a small voice.
“Good grief!”
“Not anyone we know.” Her pink tongue licked an upper lip. “A Japanese girl he met last year,” and she gave a mirthless smile. “At a real-estate convention in Melbourne, for pity’s sake.”
Tildy had received a letter from this woman asking her to release Ray from his marital vows so that they might live together–“‘I love him so much, blah, blah, so if you care for him in the slightest, blah, blah, you’ll let him be with me, blah, blah, blah’”–and enclosing a photograph of a baby girl looking vaguely like Ray, except with oriental eyes and straight black hair.
“Ray denies it’s his, of course. But I don’t believe him. Frankly, I’ve reached a point where I don’t care one way or the other. I tell you, when I looked at the photo of that baby I felt the battery acid run through my love channels and I knew that our relationship was busted for ever. But Zac’s taken it none too well. He heard us rowing about it and found me all in a heap. I honestly believe that’s what made him behave as he did. You heard about Zac, I suppose?”
Merridy nodded. Everyone had heard about her godson. Caught with his fingers in the Talbot’s till. “Zac’s five-finger discount,” Agnes was calling it.
“It was dreadful.” Tildy looked around. Then, recognising someone, leaned close. “It wasn’t much money, but Ray was furious…” Her voice trailed off. Her Cupid’s bow snapped. “Mr Talbot’s coming around tonight to discuss it. That’s why Ray wanted the whole family out of the house. Montana, Savannah, Cherokee, me. All except Zac.”
Merridy put an arm around her shoulder. “Oh, Tildy,” as two women passed.
“Hi,” one of them called out to Tildy.
“Hi,” rubbing her nose.
“Who are they?” asked Merridy after they had gone by.
“Search me,” Tildy said, pulling herself together. “Oh Christ, don’t look now. There’s Harry Ford.”
“I know. I’ve been talking to him already.”
“How is he?”
“Dying, he says.”
“He’s always dying. He’s been given extreme unction so many times the priest in Campbell Town now sends a bill.”
It revived Tildy, to laugh at her own joke. She found a tissue in her bag and blew her nose.
“He reminds me a lot of someone,” Merridy mused. “But I can’t think who.”
“Mr Twelvetrees, could it be?”
“Tildy, that’s exactly who!”
“Remember his face, how he used to stare?”
“‘Miss Framley, I think that’s your foot on the floor.’”
“That’s him! That’s him!”
“‘Please remove yourself, Miss Framley. Meanwhile, will all other couples tear their newspapers in half.’”
“Just want to get by you, mate.” A man lurched past. She was pushed against Tildy. They were joined again at the shoulder and for a second there was a unity of lines in their faces and conflicting thoughts, and they were friends again. Her hand touched Tildy’s skin. They were reconnected.
“She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes,” Tildy sang, her face lapped by the television light.
They were both laughing now; rubbing the tears that rolled down their cheeks and causing Harry’s dog to bark. They laughed so much, thinking of the Friday dances. Girls again.
“And you were always the one left standing,” said Tildy. “You were so attractive. You still are, of course. Everyone wanted you, Master Twelvetrees most of all.”
“They did not.”
But Tildy was right. Randal Twelvetrees had believed that the two of them were destined. Had got it into his head that her mother’s rejection of him years before was God’s way of preparing him for his inevitable union with Merridy. There was suddenly projected onto her memory the day that the Minister’s son had taken Merridy to a church near Penguin to make a brass rubbing. She saw him kneeling on the floor and the peculiar movement of his Adam’s apple as he brushed the lock of red hair from his eyes and declared himself. “You think there isn’t a pattern, Merridy. You think we’re just a blank sheet to be drawn on. But there is a pattern. You only have to rub on it like this. And then it takes shape, what was there all along. Our whole life. Stretching before our eyes. Just waiting to be rubbed over with a piece of black crayon.”
“Listen,” Tildy said, “I’m getting us another drink. I want to hear your news.”
Tildy came back with fresh glasses. She leaned an elbow on the table; she could have been leaning on a garden gate, contemplating cherries. And lifted an eyebrow.
“So tell me, Merridy. About yourself.”
They sat awkward, at an angle to each other.
“I don’t know there’s much to tell,” stalling.
“Everyone’s talking. That boy you rescued. I hear Alex was so brave.”
“He was. He was incredible.” And fidgeting on the stool described for her cousin the night at sea; how Alex threw himself into the waves, and how Kish almost dragged him under as they swam back to the Zemmery Fidd.
“They’re not talking only about Alex’s bravery.” Tildy picked her words with care.
“How do you mean?”
Across the table, two eyes shone. “Talk is that you and the boy, you’re actually quite close.”
“Me and Kish?” She felt the dried tears on her cheek.
“There’s me shooting my big mouth off.”
The hubbub had receded and the faces of the drinkers bathed in television light and smoke, and the denim-covered legs.
“What are they saying?”
So Tildy repeated what she had heard, about their sordid trampolinings and how Merridy was so sweet on Kish that she hung a white shirt out when it was safe to visit, a purple T-shirt when not.
“But that’s absurd,” Merridy said, and reached for her glass.
“Oh, I’ve crossed too many dry creek beds to worry about Wellington Point gossip.” Again, an eyebrow raised itself. “Even so, something’s wrong, Merridy. I know it is.”
“No, it isn’t.” She finished her drink.
Tildy stood up.
“Hey, where are you off to?” said Merridy.
“I’m getting us another.”
“I’m going.”
“Stay where you are,” Tildy commanded.
“I’ve had enough,” but Merridy sat down.
Tildy went away and presently came back.
Merridy watched her put down two more glasses on the table.
Tildy touched her arm. “Come on, sweetie. Share.” This time the cigarette she offered was hand-rolled.
Merridy shook her head. “I don’t smoke.”
“You don’t drink, and you’re drinking. C’mon, it’ll relax you. Ray used to grow it himself until he became a councillor.”
Dully, Me
rridy accepted the joint. Inhaled.
She looked up at her cousin. Tildy had seen her childhood; to everyone else, even Alex, she covered it up. Miserable, she pushed the words out with the thick, sweet smoke: “I don’t know. He reminds me of…”
“Of who?” Taking her hand away.
“No, it’s stupid. I know it is.”
Everyone at that bar, which had shrunk with the crowd of people and the enormous screen and the dimness of the lighting, everyone began to fade.
“Not him?” And Tildy saw that she had hit the mark. “That’s crazy, Merridy. Hector is dead,” very sharply.
“I know,” flinching at the name.
“Well, then.” Almost angry now.
“But what if…what if he didn’t die?”
“Well, he’d be almost forty for a start.”
“What if—”
“Oh, tommyrot. He died. I don’t know how he died, but he died. Full stop,” and sat there in glowing annoyance.
Merridy sucked on the cigarette. She was not strong enough for these memories. “He’s dead, of course. It’s just that when I’m with Kish…this sounds idiotic, but…”
“But what?”
“I feel, I don’t know…” She could not stop them. Tears coloured with mascara and rouge. Tears that followed lines which had not been there when they were young. “I feel like I did when Hector was alive.”
“That’s a very, very long time ago,” Tildy said in a voice that had never sounded so grown-up. And raised her glass.
Merridy was matching Tildy sip for sip. Swallowing more than rum. She was swallowing her fear, her pride, her guilt.
“My turn,” said Tildy in a jollier voice and took the joint from her.
Merridy borrowed Tildy’s tissue and dabbed at her cheeks. “Have you ever wanted anyone–apart from Ray?”
“Oh, Merridy, aren’t you getting any?”
“It’s not that,” in what had become a trembling whisper. “I know that look, and it’s not what you’re thinking.” Over Tildy’s shoulder she could see Harry eyeing them. “Don’t you know…” but the shame was welling, to suppose that Kish might be any resolution to her hidden anguish.
“Of course I know,” Tildy sighed. “But that’s in the past now, darling.” And tapped the grotty paperback. “This gives me everything I need. Well, almost.”
Secrets of the Sea Page 30