He offered the newcomers his hand, and then looked at its oily state apologetically and withdrew it.
‘So you saved our little girl’s life.’ Tom said. ‘How do we thank you?’
Maybe by having a shower, thought Grace. Melody winced modestly and raised a hand as if to bat away gratitude. Grace could see they would have to stop thanking her; she didn’t like it. Which would make it even harder to find things to talk about. The man she had brought smelled so strongly of cigarettes and alcohol that her eyes watered. She had a sudden and passionate need to steer them out of this passageway and into the lounge room.
‘Come, sit down. Tom, go and have a shower and hurry up!’ A mock scolding tone for the benefit of the visitor, who should have smiled in appropriate amusement at the foibles of men. That was what women did. Melody, however, just watched Tom leave with grave eyes.
Eddy held the ring box in his pocket and jiggled it between his fingers. He had spent the week in an unhealthy, sleep-deprived anxiety, and he knew he was now obsessed with finding the right place to propose marriage. It was Romy’s own fault, with her superstitious belief that the way things began determined their outcome. He knew she would put unnecessary emphasis on how the proposal was made, and, if she said yes, she would for the rest of their married lives link events back to the circumstances surrounding this momentous question. For her sake, he wanted it to be perfect. But was it for his own sake, too? Did he want to give himself the best chance? Was he in fact not sure she would say yes? But who could ever be sure of anything, he wondered, as he sat on the bed and folded a cotton handkerchief into the pocket of his pants. Romy had been in the bathroom for half an hour now, and Eddy really needed to urinate. He went to the back garden and peed on the lemon tree, zipped himself and put his hand back in his pocket, stroking the velvet of the ring box as if it was his future. Their unborn children would one day ask him Dad, how did you propose to Mum? and he wanted to have something passable to tell them. Should he book a flash restaurant? Such a cliché, though. No, tonight was full moon, a fortuitous coincidence he had seized upon when Romy had mentioned it this morning, and the forecast was fine. They would go to this dinner at the family of the rescued child, and spend an evening basking in the gratitude of these thankful people — Grace seemed very nice, and her husband, Tom, was an inventor, Romy would like that. Then, on the way home (moon rise was 11.07pm, he had checked in the paper), he would take a detour to the Royal Botanic Gardens in South Yarra, park under the elm trees on the east side, and take Romy to the low part of the fence where they had entered in the first week of their relationship, five years before. On that night, another full moon, they had frolicked through the dark park like Puck and Titania, finally stopping in a copse of endangered cycads to fuck awkwardly under some palm fronds, the far-off torch of the wandering park guard forcing them to choke back their giggles. Eddy had never before done such a thing, and he knew he had scored full points for it, and it had taken years to occur to Romy that he probably would never risk it again. Anyway, he would take them back to this holy site and hope to absorb some of that Puckish spirit, and make a proposal that would be remembered for a lifetime. Hopefully she wouldn’t want to actually shag there again; Eddy’s heart raced with anxiety at the very thought. The frightening possibility of getting caught, the discomfort of sex under trees, the added logistical difficulty of ensuring Romy reached orgasm in such an environment, while he would, conversely, ejaculate prematurely from sheer terror. No, his bedroom at home was by far his preferred venue. Although hopefully a marriage proposal would spark a shag. It had been a while now.
Romy came out of the bathroom and went to rummage for an earring. Her buxom figure was clad in a black dress which showed off her olive skin; the tops of her breasts.
‘God, you’re gorgeous.’
‘Don’t mess up my hair.’
‘I love these underpants!’
‘Eddy!’ She wriggled her dress back down and kissed him maternally on the forehead. He fell back on the bed and smiled at the ceiling; velvet between his fingers. His future was in that body; that courageous spirit, the already-existing organism that was Eddy-and-Romy. His heart was so full he had to bite his tongue, hold back his ring-loaded hand. Just four hours and he would feel the bliss of depositing this impatient load.
‘So how long have you and Van been together?’ Romy used her knife to nudge the last grains of rice onto her upturned fork, as she murmured the question to Melody. Van had sauntered outside to smoke. Melody hoped he was not rolling himself a joint. She really needed to make some friends for Skip, to start building a normal life.
‘We’re not together.’ Melody paired her knife and fork and laid them across the plate. She had answered this question before, in other situations, and was unsure why it made her internally wince. It felt even more uncomfortable when asked in Van’s presence, although he only smiled at it. Was it simply the resistance to being put in an Married/Unmarried box, or the weird thought of being in a relationship with Van, or was it, worse, a flicker of guilt about this friendship, a sense that she should have cooled it a while back? ‘We’re just friends.’
‘Really?’ Romy looked towards the door where Van had exited, through which he could be expected to return. She was an attractive woman who had played to the table throughout this dinner; charming Tom with flattering questions about his invention, beseeching Melody for every detail of Lotte’s rescue, crouching on the floor to talk to the children about their toys, although she quickly lost interest in that when the adults stopped watching. A woman who enjoyed attention, who had the enviable knack of being able to duck out of boring turns in conversations, who could steer the subject quickly back to herself. A lovely rich aura; maybe a deep, dark rose.
‘He was my sister’s boyfriend.’ Melody shrugged. She thought of the cat with the forked tail that used to hang around their family home that Van and her sister had adored. Eddy gazed at his girlfriend; he was a planet to her sun. He was in love with her, and the woman was in love with being loved. Melody had seen it before.
Grace and Tom’s house had a comfortably messy look about it, as though one day, long ago, there had been a theme, an effort made at Understated Style, but in the manner of many with a young child this had been superseded by the theme of Just Surviving. The glass of shells in the window sill was coated in dust, and a fly had died amongst the sand dollars and baby’s ears. Picture books were piled on a chair, in an attempt to clean up, she deduced, and in fact it was clear that someone with a propensity for grouping like objects rather than actually putting them away had been placed in charge of cleaning duties. CDs were stacked on the player; one full washing basket was placed at a lean on another and tucked under a table; hair pins and spare change and miscellaneous small objects sat in their respective piles on the mantelpiece.
Melody surreptitiously checked her watch, and wondered whether she should suggest sitting outside, under the rays of the full moon. They were nice enough people, but the night had somehow, so far, not quite gelled, and she had given up hope that it would ever leave this realm of getting-to-know-you questions, punctuated with Romy’s flirtation and Grace’s teary gratitude for Melody’s lifesaving act. Grace’s husband, Tom, seemed heavy and quiet, as if he would really have preferred a night in bed with a takeaway and the cricket on telly over this high-pitched dinner party. He had used his wife’s outbursts of thankfulness to nod mutely and slip off to the kitchen, from which the day’s cricket highlights could be heard murmuring on the radio.
Grace herself had felt the urge to show Melody Lotte’s birth and newborn baby pictures, as if in stopping the child from being killed, she was somehow in the same category as a mother who gave her life. Melody had quite enjoyed the pictures, she was always interested in births, but was privately dismayed by the arsenal of medical equipment Lotte had been plugged into upon entry to the world. Skip had been homebirthed on the commune, on a warm moonlit night like this, and it was one of Melody’s sweetest memorie
s.
‘I’ll go check on Skip,’ she said hopefully, rising from the table. ‘And Lotte.’
‘They’re fine,’ said Tom gloomily, having already unsuccessfully tried this excuse to gain respite. ‘You’ll have trouble tearing them apart.’
‘Oh.’ She sank reluctantly back into her chair.
Tom sighed, and attempted a smile. ‘What do you do?’
‘Now? Look after Skip.’
‘Ah . . .’
Money. She could see his brain ticking over, with city thoughts and calculations. ‘We always get by,’ she said calmly. ‘I never worry about money.’
‘Really?’ His mouth hung open. She suddenly had his full attention. He leaned towards her as if she had signaled she was about to make some great announcement. She felt compelled to make one.
‘The universe will provide. It always does.’
He fell back in his chair, his cheeks drained of colour, his eyes wide with shock.
It was all too weird. Melody excused herself and went to look for Skip.
‘Home time, Skip.’
‘Noooo!’ Skip skittered under Lotte’s bed like a crab. ‘I want to stay here.’
‘Aren’t you getting tired?’ She crouched and raised the blanket. The two children pressed themselves into the dark cavity, their heads together. She gave up, and straightened herself. ‘Well, soon, Skip. Five more minutes.’
She dragged her feet back to the dining table. There they all were, in varying stages of social torture. It was like an Oscar Wilde play gone wrong; it was the most boring dinner she had attended in her life. On weary examination, she found that her seat had been taken, with Romy leaning on one arm to chat to Van, who sat in a cloud of marijuana smoke. Romy tilted her head, and continually played with her long hair. Melody stood behind her chair and crouched for her bag, pretending to look for something inside it.
‘Oh, I’ve taken your chair!!’ Romy giggled mischievously, and wrinkled her nose at Van, as though they had done it together. Across the table, Eddy was distractedly involved in a conversation with Grace about teaching standards. He was pale and thin-lipped, and answering Grace’s earnest queries with sing-song generalities. ‘I guess there never would be enough money in the system to make people happy, would there?’ His eyes drifted back to Romy. He laughed loudly at a comment Van had made, seeking to thrust himself into their conversation, but Grace, by his side, was insistent.
‘This government needs to really examine its policies, and it needs to get the people on board. For example, they need to transfer control of kindergartens to the Department of Education. What’s it doing in the Department of Human Services, alongside aged care and immunisations? Everyone these days knows — everyone — that the first few years are when you lay down the foundations for a human being’s life . . .’
‘Oh, precisely.’ Eddy sounded faint. ‘Let me educate the boy and I will give you back the man . . . Romy, who is it we know who always says that?’
Melody couldn’t get out of this place quickly enough. She cleared her throat. ‘We should probably think about . . .’
‘Would you like your chair back?’ Romy broke off her whispering with Van and smiled up at Melody, at the same time lowering her chest to the table as though to suction-cup herself to it.
‘No, no, I’ll sit here.’ Melody crossly took the chair beside Eddy.
‘I’ve never done it!’ Romy breathed at Van. Melody tried to catch Van’s eye, so she could roll her own heavenward at this silly woman, but he would not look at her. He was idle, and stoned, and therefore dangerous. She should not have brought him, should not have tried to mix the old world and the new. He sat back in his chair and regarded his new friend with what Melody recognised as curiosity, the same emotion with which he might have inspected an interesting beetle. He was not a man any woman should trust. He had never fully recovered from Esme’s death, and had a sliver of ice in his heart. He had taken off his leather jacket, and he wore a red T-shirt with a Chinese symbol on the front, and his muscular arms rested on the table. A small silver earring twinkled in his ear and his face was unshaven. Despite everything, he appeared to be the social success story of the evening, while Grace and Tom’s effusive speeches of gratitude to Melody had nervously withered away an hour ago in the face of her own lack of interest.
‘We could do it right now.’ Van leaned forward, his elbows on the table and his muscles twitched, smiling down at Romy. The silly woman widened her eyes, squeezed her hands together and breathed ‘Yes!’ Everyone listened, although other conversations limped along as people tried not to look at the only two people enjoying themselves.
‘We all know how important kindergarten teachers are, and yet they get paid less than primary teachers!’ Grace orated, determined. ‘About twenty per cent less, according to the last Education Union surveys. I bet most people aren’t even aware of that. Did you know kindergarten teachers get paid twenty per cent less?’
‘We could!’ Romy’s face was alight. She pushed back her chair and stopped, as if waiting for Van to do something.
‘Well.’ He stood and put on his jacket, and strode to the door, stopping to cock an eyebrow at Romy as if daring her. She practically ran after him.
‘What are you guys up to?’ Eddy tried to make a joke of it.
‘Just taking Romy here for a spin.’
‘Van!’ Melody said. He could not do this: take this woman off for a motorbike ride and leave her partner ashen-faced. Why had she brought him?
‘You’re what?’
‘Does she have a helmet?’
‘She can use yours.’
Eddy stood. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Little ride,’ Romy threw back over her shoulder, already out the front door.
Eddy followed them out. ‘Great machine, Fan. I’d be interested to check out the engine when you get back. I have a small bit of knowledge about motors, nothing really extensive, but . . .’ His trailing words could be heard through the open window, the warm night.
The chainsaw roar of a motorbike sliced through his words, and a picture fell from the wall of the lounge room. The glass cracked.
Eddy stood out on the verandah and peered into the night. They had been gone over an hour. He stared and stared, but it was pointless; he would hear the motorbike returning from two suburbs away if it came, the ugly damn thing was so loud. Did it have any safety features, or were there no such things for motorbikes? The velvet box in his pocket had been rubbed and rolled, over and over, until the nap, once comforting and thrilling, had become a sensation linked with sickening dread, and its touch only heightened the toxicity of his panic. He hated this place now, these people who had witnessed his humiliation, this dusty verandah with its pile of uncared-for bikes leaning against the weatherboard, a child seat on the back of one. The orange foot of the seat had dropped off onto the ground, a while ago judging by the cobwebs nested within. He checked his watch, again, and peered into the darkness, again. The biker’s friend appeared beside him, shaking her head.
‘She wants to call the police.’ Melody gestured her head in at the front door.
‘Well of course she should!’ Eddy strode back towards the door, his rage at Romy only too keen to be expelled upon a less-deserving subject. ‘And why not? Does that man have something to hide? Oh, God. Oh please God, don’t let him crash.’
‘Van’s a good rider.’ Melody’s voice was calm.
‘He looks like a bit of risky business to me!’ Eddy blustered. ‘With that . . . earring.’ He sounded stiff and old-mannish to himself, and he braced for a smirk from this woman, some mockery. But there was none.
‘You’re right.’ Melody picked a twig and snapped it carefully in half. ‘Van is a risk-taker. He rides a motorbike. He lives a bit more . . . well . . . But he’s never crashed that bike that I know of. She’ll be safe.’
Eddy wished she’d go inside and leave him alone. He burned with indignant shame, to be left with these people, to have his doubts about Ro
my peeled open so he was exposed, just the rotten core of his needy, suspicious love on show.
He sat outside alone, for how long, he did not know. He checked the ABC news on his phone for Melbourne road accidents. He could hear the others talking inside. The children were toasting marshmallows. The night that had been about to end had somehow found a second wind on the back of his misery. Melody popped her head out again. ‘Of course it’s not impossible they could have had an accident,’ she speculated. ‘Maybe we should call the police.’
‘They haven’t,’ he blurted, leaning on the letterbox pillar and biting his tongue. Unknown to the others, he had called Romy’s mobile. The dial tone had been interrupted by laughter at the other end; Romy’s giggles, and a male murmur, before the unmistakable sound of someone fumbling to press the hang-up button. Eddy had held the disconnected line to his ear for a full minute. That had been not been the sound of a woman held hostage, or injured on the side of the road. And yet, strangely, it was a sound that made his heart dive into freefall.
What had Romy said recently? This year will be my year of trying new things.
‘Oh! You got onto her, then?’
‘No.’ He put the phone back into his pocket. ‘Well, I called her but there was no answer. But I just know . . . that she’s alright.’ His gloom must be revealing it all. Such a despondent tone. ‘I know she’s not dead.’
‘I guess you know these things. When you’re close. As a couple. In a relationship.’
‘We’re very close.’
‘You can see that.’
‘We’re practically engaged.’
‘Oh, that’s great!’
He took out the ring box and opened it. ‘Argyle diamond.’
‘Oh!’ Melody took a step back and fanned herself. ‘Shit. Was that . . .’ She gestured, dismayed, out at the night and back at Eddy. ‘Were you going to . . . tonight . . .?’
The Near Miss Page 5