‘What is it?’
She unfolded the fist close up under my nose. It took me some seconds to focus on what it was. My shells.
‘Found them, I did. Early today. Chucked down on me lawn. What a thing to do. I ask you. Some kids I suppose. Makes me mad, I must say. You work and slave to make the place look decent and then some drongos come and pull a stunt like this. They coulduv done some damage, you know. Got sharp edges, these things. Coulduv got trodden in. Damaged the roots. Lucky for them they didn’t, or they’d have had me after them pretty quick, I can tell you. Come to think about it, I’ll bet it was that paperboy that did it. He’d better watch out for himself, that’s all.’
I looked sympathetic. ‘Oh well. No harm done, I suppose.’
‘No. Suppose not. Still, it’s not right, is it? I mean to say. It’s an uphill battle as it is. What with the poor soil and all them old tree roots I couldn’t shift up out of it. Now people are chucking litter on it.’
‘Why don’t you put covers on it at night like they do on cricket pitches?’ I suggested: it was about the same size. I said goodbye and went inside. Looking through the sitting-room blinds, I saw her thinking it over—pacing it out and making notes.
I washed up the bits of used crockery dotted round the house. I hung the washing on the rotary clothes hoist out at the back, noting as I did so the subliminal whine of the electric lawnmower drifting round from the front, and phoned James. He wasn’t there—wasn’t in this afternoon, be back later, someone thought he had said. I left my message, found all the remaining food in the house and stuffed it between two slices of faintly stale bread, and took it to bed with a book. The book and the sandwich lasted the same length of time and then I was asleep, at first half-thinking, half-dreaming about phoning Jonathan back and finding out how things were going; but then sleep was deepening all around and I couldn’t. James was there, standing in half-dark by the bed. I recognised his knees. The waist of his trousers appeared to be below them. He seemed to be undressing. Thinking very slowly but logically, I moved across the bed. He wriggled in and lay facing me.
‘Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. It just seemed such a good idea. You looked nice curled up in here. You feel nice too. Except for the crumbs.’
‘What’s the time? Did you get my message? We’d better get up. I haven’t made a shopping list. What are you doing?’
‘It doesn’t matter about the time. Yes, I got your message. Which is why I came home early. We don’t need a list, and you know what I’m doing. I’ll do it some more. That’s if you don’t mind.’ James was a gentleman. It was a result of his perfect upbringing.
Rising to these high standards, we showed each other quantities of style and finesse over the next hour or two. It might have been the result of good breeding, but most likely it was practice. It set the mood of the weekend, which passed quickly and well. We made the supermarket just in time and so avoided lingering and arguments. Afterwards we had dinner at an Italian restaurant in a new suburban shopping arcade. It had red-and-white check tablecloths and a black-and-white tiled floor and candles, and smelled of paint and pasta.
We managed rather well in our role of happy young marrieds and sustained it through Saturday and into Sunday. On Saturday I thought often of phoning Jonathan and seeing how things were. I even thought of going up on Saturday night and helping out, as James was at home. But I did neither.
On Sunday night thoughts of phoning him nagged harder. James was asleep, the house quiet: there was nothing to prevent me. But remnants of the weekend mood kept me in another dimension, suspended above my own action. As I sat at the large pine table in the living room I tried to conjure up Ben and Gloria. But they came to me only as blurred and faded shades. Usually they flitted somewhere in my head accessible to my thoughts, a subconscious shadow-play which sent bubbles of action without detail up into my mind, but now they wouldn’t come into focus. I sat at the table. It was very quiet. From time to time the old fridge in the kitchen rumbled and shook, the only sound. The blinds were up and the moonlight was just strong enough to see by without extra light. I played patience, a game of Japanese Rug with four packs of cards. The cards were placed alternately straight and sideways in a multicoloured quilt. I got three games out from five played and went to bed while still ahead.
Monday morning. James was shaving. Cleaning his teeth. Getting papers together. Polishing his boots. He walked to the door, where he paused and fixed his let’s-be-grown-up-about-this face on. Turning, he showed it to me and said:
‘Look. I just don’t know when I’ll be home. If it’s tonight it will be late, so don’t expect me and don’t wait up. You know how it is. I can’t help it—got so much work on just now.’ He excused himself through the door, which squeaked appreciatively after him. Another squeak: his head came back round the door and spoke again.
‘Sorry. I’ll fix that bloody door, soon as I get a chance. See you later. Take care.’
So I took care all day long. No point, I thought, in phoning Jonathan now. I’d be seeing him tomorrow. If he needed anything he would call me anyhow. He knew I’d do what I could to help. I looked forward to our lunch together. With luck he’d have his sense of humour back—have got things more in proportion.
That evening I laid out my going-up-to-town clothes, choosing them with care and anticipation. Next morning, as early as I dared, I put them on, and after the usual trip round to the next road to deposit Angelica, sat in them on the bus composing opening lines in my head. I got off the bus at the square with the fountain in it and walked quickly to Jonathan’s flat, climbing the wood-and-iron stairs at the side of the warehouse and knocking on the large brown painted door. There was no answer. I called out.
‘Hi Jonathan. It’s me. Can I come in?’
No answer. I pushed at the door, and it opened: it was on the latch. I went in. Obviously Jonathan had gone out for a minute and had left it open for me. Inside I crossed straight over to the record shelves to choose something to play. The shelves were empty, the stereo deck gone. Looking round the walls, I saw that the best pictures were gone too, their empty frames leaning against the walls. There were also gaps in the bookshelves.
I went into the bedroom. All seemed normal. I opened the wardrobe. There were clothes hanging there, but again there were gaps. I returned to the living room and sat at the table, feeling sick and frightened. Tuesdays had done a bunk. What should I do? I sat staring down at the floor. At my feet were little splashes of blood, dried brown and powdery at the edges, still red and sticky at the centre and making a neat trail to the door. I started to cry—because he had left here bleeding, because I had lost a friend, because I couldn’t think what to do with the rest of my free day.
I went back into the bedroom and lay down on the bed to cry properly. The beautiful fur rug was gone. There was a crumpled newspaper on the bed: a weekly paper, a tabloid printed on the mainland, Australia’s biggest-selling scandal sheet, which was always good for a superior laugh. ‘Wife-swapping circle uncovered in respectable suburb.’ This story, written in a polished style of shocked journalese, ran in neat black lines beside a photograph of a naked girl straddling some rocks on a beach. There was a front-page story of great local interest. Jonathan’s face looked out, in a slightly younger version, from a maze of smudged print. There were other photographs: the outside of the restaurant, two young girls smiling arm in arm in summer dresses, a middle-aged man, his mouth open, roaring from the page with righteous indignation. Underneath it said: ‘Outraged father of the two girls in the case of Jonathan Pickup, well-known restaurateur, spoke with our reporter in his suburban home today. Angry that the case against Pickup had been dropped, he said: “The man should be locked up. He’s no better than a filthy animal. Young innocent girls should be protected from the likes of him. He must have drugged them or something to get them to do those things in the photographs. I won’t rest until justice has been done. It’s too late for my girls, but I’m thinking of others. All they
wanted was to make a bit more money waitressing in the holidays and look what’s happened. It’s a bloody disgrace, and if the police aren’t prepared to do anything about it, then it’s up to us ordinary decent citizens to deal with the likes of him.” ’ There was a lot more. Until now the details had not been publicly known, but now they were, and Jonathan had fled, although the police had decided not to prosecute.
I looked along his bookshelves and took out any interesting-looking books I could see. I carried them into his bedroom and piled them on his bed. I opened his wardrobe door and removed a pair of rich-looking dark leather boots and a thick natural-wool cable-stitched jumper, and put them on the bed with the books. Behind the kitchen door was a canvas hold-all hanging on a hook. I carried it through to the bedroom and put the books, the boots and the jumper into it, adding two bottles of red wine and one of white that were left on the kitchen shelf. Then, thinking such wanton waste of good food wicked, I went back into the kitchen and collected a dozen deserted eggs and some cold cooked sausages in a brown paper bag. I hoped Ben would like the boots and jumper—that they would fit him and that he would be pleased with me for bringing them to him.
I took a last sentimental look around the flat. Wishing to leave it all neat and tidy, I straightened the crumpled bed and plumped up the pillows. My hand closed on the handle of a leather whip—quite a small one, the plaited leather handle not more than six inches long, but the thongs, the regulation nine, much longer. They curled nastily inwards as I whisked them through the air. I wound them neatly round the handle and put the whip into the bag, taking care not to break the eggs. Everything has its uses. I picked up the bag, now unpleasantly heavy, and left.
I walked back through the town to the Museum and Art Gallery, down the main shopping block, through the square with the fountain and up the stone steps to the main entrance. The building was in two parts, the museum on the left, the art collection on the right, the two joined by a large foyer complete with potted plants in large plastic tubs, a cloakroom, toilets and a small shop selling postcards and souvenirs. I left my canvas bag in the cloakroom and turned into the public rooms of the art gallery.
The paintings blazed bright and brazen, along the walls of the ground-floor gallery. I stood looking down the length of the room. They shone forth like windows looking out on landscapes full of rare surrealistic vegetation—rich, glittering acrylic jewels.
I walked to the first picture. A lagoon shimmered: blues, greens, yellows and edges of violet. Lily pads floated on the surface. A tall waterbird picked its way fastidiously across the thickly textured paint solidity. The wavering figure of a pale white girl with straw hair was reflected on the waters, wading into them. My toes curled inside my shoes, feeling sympathetic terror at unknown slimy things wriggling buried in the mud—hidden nastinesses, waiting to be disturbed, waiting to attack that perfectly smooth white body, tearing lumps from it, staining the pretty water crimson.
I escaped to the next picture. And to the next. And so round the room. Each held one of these vulnerable white bodies—a soft centre exposed in its beautiful landscape beneath the flawless blue skies. Like shell-less crabs they were, edging their way cautiously through Eden to destruction—sideways, through one picture and into the next.
I turned to leave, bracing myself to cover that vast yardage of polished wood-block floor. I felt exposed. Something might jump out of its frame and grab me, and I would join those poor soft white slugs in their alien country in the sunshine.
There was a new painting. Large Aboriginal figures stood staring out from a background of native grave-posts and ritual totems. Somewhere, out beyond the tightly knit group and the grave-post barricade, the landscape burned and glowed. In its place, in proportion. There was a message in all this somewhere, but today was not the day to get it. I made it to the door.
I collected my bag from the cloakroom and walked out into the cheerful, never-ending sunshine with a head full of foreboding. I walked into the square with the fountain, sat on one of the wooden seats and ate the cold sausages.
It seemed simplest to go home. I caught the bus, intending to go straight round to collect Angelica, but changed my mind. I had to get rid of the heavy bag first. I got off the bus a stop earlier and walked down the road towards my house.
The street was quiet, and it felt like three o’clock. All the women were down at the beach, except me and my neighbour. I could see her crouching on her lawn staring at one of the bald patches. She looked up as I approached and waved cheerfully.
‘Gooday. Back early, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am. I didn’t feel well. So I came home.’
‘Shame, that. Anything I can do?’
‘No, thanks. I think I’ll just go inside and lie down for a bit.’ As I said it, I started to feel sick.
‘Yes, you do that. It’s the heat getting you down, I expect. Been doing a bit of shopping by the looks of it.’ She looked at the bag. ‘Bit hot to be lugging heavy stuff about.’
‘Yes, it is.’ Pains were shooting up my arm. I dropped the bag and ran into the house. I just made it to the bathroom to be sick; the shaking and sweating subsided. Maybe it was the sausages. I washed my face and cleaned my teeth and went back outside to pick up the bag. My neighbour was standing guard over it.
‘You poor thing. You do look terrible. Now you just get along in out of this heat. I’ll give you a hand in with this bag.’
Feeling too weak to protest, I led her through the squeaking door and into the sitting room. ‘This is really very kind of you. Just leave it in here. It’s full of books. I’ll put them on the shelves later.’
‘Books, is it? Feels more like a ton of bricks, I must say.’
‘Yes, they are rather heavy. Sorry about that. Well, I think I’d better go and lie down for a bit.’
‘You do that, dear. I’ll see myself out. That’s if you’re sure there’s nothing else I can do for you.’ She was looking intently round the room. ‘Do a lot of reading, I see. I haven’t got the time meself. Always on the go, I can tell you. Well, I’ll be seeing you, pet. Just sing out if there’s any little thing you need.’ She left.
I went into the bedroom and closed the blinds. I lay on the bed in the gloomy heat of the endless afternoon, wondering what time had been used for before my loss of resources, congratulating myself on my withering friendships. The day after next was Thursday. By not looking past that, I started to feel better. I got up and unpacked the bag. The whip was a problem, and I chucked it under the bed. It could stay there for years, slowly buried in drifts of curly white dust; no questions asked. The boots and jumper I left in the bag ready for Thursday. I shoved them down behind a pile of old magazines in the bottom of the wardrobe, in case James saw it and wanted to keep the things for himself. Then I went round to collect Angelica.
I must still have looked ill, for Mother-in-law ushered me in, sat me down with a cup of tea, stood over me and said: ‘You should get out in the fresh air more. It’s not good for you to sit in that house all day. Why don’t you take Angelica down to the beach in the afternoons? She loves it so, and it would do you both the world of good. You might make friends. They’re an awfully nice crowd of girls. It’s rather a shame, don’t you think, when you have such a beautiful beach so near at hand, not to use it?’
‘I do go to the beach. But I don’t like it when it’s crowded.’
‘But you really should try to get out and make friends, my dear. Such nice girls. And they all have tiny babies, bless them, so you would have such a lot in common.’
‘Well, perhaps I will. I’ll go down one afternoon soon.’
‘That’s good, my dear. I only want to see you happy, you know. And James. It worries me to see you brooding by yourself all the time.’
‘I do go out, you know. I’ve been out today. And I’m going out on Thursday. I do have friends of my own.’ I decided not to tell her about Jonathan. I also decided, at that moment, not to give Tuesdays up. I would go up to town anyway.
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‘Yes, I know that, my dear.’ She sat down opposite me in a large floral-covered armchair. ‘But perhaps it would be better for you to make new friends round here. With girls you have something in common with. Circumstances do change, you know.’
The phone rang, which was most convenient. I felt sick again. When she came back into the room I said that I had to go. She stood on her moody concrete and waved us down the road. We squeaked straight down to the beach in search of fresh air to do me good. A few of the older children were whooping over the sand and playing on the swing. I lifted Angelica and carried her in my arms along the edge of the water. She wove her fingers into my hair and breathed her soft rabbit-breaths into my ear. We stood a long time staring into the waves. The shrieks of the chasing children sounded echoing and empty across the darkening beach. As the darkness deepened, they slunk home in quiet huddles. The narrow strip of depleted scrub and bush grew black—an even, deep black. At the far end of the beach away from the suburb, the bush was thicker and stretched away unbroken, racing away from the houses, gaining strength as the gap widened, building up like a breaking wave, in a thick foaming black line against the darkening sky. I snuggled Angelica’s damp warmth against me. As I watched, two tall black shapes peeled away from the wall of blackness. They flitted from the shadows and picked their way over the rocks at the end of the beach down on to the sand. Long slivers of black. Each figure held a long, tapering spear poised at shoulder height. A flashlight clicked on. Murmuring voices drifted on the air. They were local men out fishing for flounder. Each wore long wading boots. Each carried a powerful torch to transfix the flat fish in a circle of light on the sandy shallow sea bottom. They carried spears with which to stick them. They came on in stealth and silence, their lights moving slowly through the shallows towards us. We turned and walked back to the pram. I tucked Angelica in and squeaked off up the road. The house was dark and uninviting. But there was nowhere else to go. We were home. Angelica had gone to sleep and I didn’t wake her. She would wake in the night to be fed. No matter. It helped pass the time.
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