The Girl Who Saw Everything

by Alma De Groen

  EDWINA: It doesn’t matter. I’m used to Saul and other women. I don’t like it, but it’s okay. It’s fine. [She slams the receiver down.] I’ve met this new boy. You’d like him, Gaz. He designs chairs. He wears 1970s terylene suits with multi-coloured golf shoes and he gets away with it.

  GAZ: I’m very happy for you, Edwina.

  EDWINA: Thank you, Gaz. Me too. [She picks up her bag.] I just say to myself, ‘You’re okay, Eddie Rouse, don’t worry about it’.

  She heads for the door. He watches her, forlorn.

  GAZ: You are okay, Eddie. You’re very much okay.

  He picks up the silkscreen and follows her out.

  March. GAZ walks on with sheets of drawing paper and a piece of charcoal. He wears an old singlet and looks unkempt. He spreads the sheets of paper around and contemplates the images he has drawn. They are all drawings of eyes in a variety of styles. He takes a blank sheet and begins to draw. CAROL comes in. She removes her high heels.

  CAROL: I hate Sydney in the summer. The air’s like soup. I don’t remember that it used to be this bad. I’m sure it wasn’t this sticky ten years ago… It’s absolutely the worst weather possible for allergies.

  She mops the back of her neck with Kleenex. She registers the state of the room.

  Was Mark happy?

  GAZ: Very happy. He’s been wanting to buy me out for years.

  CAROL: I stopped by your house on the way home. I managed to get part of the rent for you.

  GAZ: Thank you.

  CAROL: You ought to be a bit tougher with them, sweetheart.

  GAZ: I know.

  CAROL: You’re not very tough with anyone, are you? I mean look at Liz: half the place in the Mountains belongs to you. If you’re paying fifty per cent of the rent from the house in Glebe to her, then we ought to be able to use the house in the Mountains from time to time.

  GAZ: It’s her home now.

  CAROL: And what about you?

  GAZ: What about me?

  CAROL: You’ve let her dispossess you.

  GAZ: No I haven’t.

  CAROL: This flat really isn’t a suitable place for you to be working in.

  GAZ: I know.

  CAROL: In a place this size you have to be super-tidy.

  GAZ: I’ll clean it up.

  CAROL: Is there any iced water?

  GAZ: I put some in the fridge about an hour ago.

  CAROL: Bottled water?

  GAZ: I forgot. I’ll go out in a minute and get some.

  CAROL: You may not care about your brain cells, Gareth, but I do care about mine.

  She picks up her bag and shoes and takes them out, then comes back.

  I’ve got to be honest with you: this wasn’t my idea of a long-term relationship—to tie myself to a man who sits around all day doing weird drawings of eyes and reading books on menopause.

  GAZ: I’ll have money soon from Mark. You won’t be supporting me much longer.

  CAROL: It’s not just the money, Gareth. I don’t like weirdness. I never have. I get nervous.

  GAZ: Don’t be nervous, Carol.

  CAROL: I thought we were going into business, but you seem to have lost interest. Aren’t you interested in signs?

  GAZ: No I’m not interested in signs! What the hell would make me interested in signs?

  CAROL: Don’t shout at me. You see what I mean?

  GAZ: I wasn’t shouting at you.

  CAROL: You were shouting at me.

  GAZ: If you want me to shout I’ll shout at you!

  CAROL: What’s the matter with you?

  GAZ: I don’t know. I’m blighted. I’ve got some kind of blight. I think there’s some kind of curse on me.

  CAROL: My luck is terrible.

  GAZ: What?

  CAROL: My luck is just awful. With men.

  GAZ: Do you know what Francis Bacon said?

  CAROL: He said he was Shakespeare, didn’t he? Or somebody said he was.

  GAZ: [shouting] Francis Bacon the painter! He said most people never think about life! He said the world’s a dung heap!—and we’re living on the compost of the earth! We’re living on the compost of millions and millions of people who’ve died and are blowing around! The dead are blowing in our faces every time we breathe in! Every time I breathe in I breathe her in!

  CAROL: Who?

  GAZ: Who, you silly bitch? Who?

  CAROL: I don’t know. Who? [She shakes her head.] I really do have the most rotten luck. I really do. The last time I had a long-term relationship he was wearing flares. I hear they’re coming back.

  GAZ: My life is ruined and you’re sitting there talking about flared trousers!

  CAROL: Whose life is ruined?

  GAZ: My life is ruined!

  CAROL: If it comes to that, things haven’t been so hot for me lately.

  GAZ: Jesus God…

  CAROL: It’s all right for you. You just sit here all day doing the same crazy drawings over and over.

  A silence.

  GAZ: You were dead lucky, do you know that? You were dead lucky you didn’t see her. [Pause.] Though if you’d been driving a bit more carefully none of this would be happening.

  CAROL stares at him. She picks up the drawing he has been working on.

  CAROL: [quietly] Get out, Gareth. Get out now and don’t come back.

  She rips the drawing in two.

  GAZ: Don’t do that!

  She begins to gather up the others.

  Leave those!

  She ignores him.

  Leave my drawings alone, Carol!

  CAROL: [tearing them] They’re not drawings! They’re insane!

  GAZ: Give them to me!

  He tries to rescue what’s left. She evades him. He hits her, then steps back, horrified.

  God, I’m sorry… I can’t believe I did that.

  She holds her face.

  Are you okay?

  CAROL: [stepping back] Get away from me, you bastard!

  GAZ: I’m really sorry. I really am.

  CAROL: Don’t touch me! Get away from me!

  GAZ: I don’t believe I did that… Are you sure you’re all right?

  CAROL: Fuck off, you bastard! You creep!

  GAZ: I didn’t mean to hurt you—honestly. If it’s any help, you have my permission to hit me back.

  CAROL: What?

  GAZ: Hit me.

  CAROL: Don’t be ridiculous.

  GAZ: I’m not being ridiculous. Come on—hit me. It’ll make us both feel better.

  A pause.

  CAROL: [slowly] Okay, Gareth… If you absolutely insist—

  She walks up and clocks him really hard. He reels back.

  GAZ: Jesus.

  She launches herself at him and begins to beat on him with her fists. He puts his arms up to shield himself.

  CAROL: [yelling] You’re all fucked! You know that?! You’re all hopelessly, genetically, fundamentally fucked!

  GAZ: I said hit me, I didn’t say kill me!

  They fall to the floor and roll over and over, fighting with the abandonment of children. It has the semblance of reality, and each knows that at any moment it could be, but primarily it functions as a release, especially for CAROL who lets out years of frustration and resentment. GAZ’s nose begins to bleed and his singlet is ripped.

  CAROL: [exhausted] You’re hurting me!

  GAZ: [immediately] Sorry.

  They break apart.

  GAZ: You’re bleeding.

  CAROL: I’m not bleeding. You are.

  GAZ: [feeling his nose] Jesus. I think you hurt me.

  CAROL: I hope so. [She staggers up.] No more Russian roulette.

  GAZ: [dazed] What?

  CAROL: No more men… I’m going overseas… I’m going to spend my money looking at old buildings!

  GAZ: I’m sorry, Carol. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.

  CAROL: Don’t keep saying you’re sorry, you arsehole! The only thing I’ve got going for me is the fact that you’re a shit and I’m not going to miss y
ou!

  She begins gathering up the remains of the drawings.

  GAZ: I’ve been a wimp all my life… How the hell did I get to be a villain?… I tried to do the right thing… I don’t know how it happened. [Pause.] I’ll get my things together.

  He starts to exit. CAROL thrusts the drawings at him. He turns away.

  CAROL: Gareth?

  He stops.

  Leave the Petaluma, would you? I think I might need it.

  GAZ leaves. CAROL clenches her hands.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit!

  She breaks into tears, then leaves.

  LIZ enters. She removes the ‘Hockney’ portrait from the wall and takes it out. She comes back and pulls a backcloth from the wall revealing a clear expanse painted in a warm, neutral shade. She goes. GAZ comes in wearing an open shirt over the torn singlet from the fight with CAROL. His face still shows traces of blood. LIZ comes in. She has both arms in plaster from the elbows down. They stop in shock when they see each other.

  GAZ: Jesus Christ, Liz!

  LIZ: Mr Kowalski, I presume’?

  GAZ: I warned you! Didn’t I warn you about him? I’ll kill the bastard! Where is he?

  LIZ: He’s not here.

  GAZ: I’ll wring his bloody neck!

  LIZ: It wasn’t Saul. It happened after he left.

  GAZ: What happened?

  LIZ: I fell. [Staring at his face] And what happened to you?

  GAZ: Never mind what happened to me. How did you fall?

  LIZ moves behind the sofa.

  LIZ: Why have you got blood on your face?

  GAZ: Altitude—I drove up here too fast.

  LIZ: What do you want here, Gaz?

  He stares at her across the sofa.

  GAZ: What do I want here? Look at you. [Bitterly] You’re afraid of your own husband. Though of course statistics show that’s exactly who you should be afraid of.

  LIZ: I’m not afraid of you.

  GAZ: Liar! You’re afraid of me. Muzzy old Gaz!

  LIZ: Muzzy?

  GAZ: How did you fall?

  LIZ: I was coming back from Gordon Falls lookout.

  GAZ: People don’t fall and break both their arms!

  LIZ: I did.

  GAZ: Jesus Christ, this is a nightmare! I can’t do anything right anymore. Everything I do just goes on and on multiplying into disaster!

  LIZ: What are you talking about? It’s got nothing to do with you!

  GAZ: It’s got everything to do with me! I shouldn’t have left you alone here! Edwina was right: I am obtuse. You’ve been going through a difficult time. I’ve been reading up on it.

  LIZ: Reading up on what?

  GAZ: Menopause.

  LIZ: Menopause?

  GAZ: What were you doing at the lookout?

  LIZ: I was doing what people normally do at a lookout: I was looking at the view!

  GAZ: Are you sure?

  LIZ: What do you mean am I sure?

  GAZ: I have to ask, Liz.

  LIZ: I’m not suicidal! Middle-aged ladies don’t off themselves. Who wants the grand gesture to be dismissed as menopausal? We can’t even damned well cry!

  GAZ: How did you get home?

  LIZ: I drove home.

  GAZ: How? You had two broken bloody arms!

  LIZ: I didn’t know they were broken. This girl in a silver cape came and helped me up. She came and asked me if I was all right, and she put her arm around me and sat with me for a while because there was no one else around. She told me she was a storyteller. She goes around schools telling stories.

  GAZ: A silver cape?

  LIZ: I don’t know—it looked sort of silvery. Maybe it was grey. Anyway, I got home and when I went to bed my arm was a bit sore so the next morning I went up to the hospital. They x-rayed it and discovered it was broken so they put it in plaster. I went home and the next day my other arm was hurting so I went back to the hospital and they x-rayed it and found that it was broken too.

  GAZ: What kind of person breaks both their arms and doesn’t bloody know?

  LIZ: Someone who didn’t know when they were in pain.

  GAZ: Where was Saul during all this?

  LIZ: He’s back with Edwina.

  GAZ: She told me she’d found a bloke in terylene trousers!

  LIZ: She’s back with Saul.

  GAZ: [scratching] And you tell me you’re not upset!

  LIZ: Why the hell would I be upset over Saul? Jesus, you men!

  GAZ: You were in here with the damn door open! You were hoping it was him!

  LIZ: I’m not going to sit here all summer with the doors shut, Gaz!

  GAZ: I don’t know why I bothered putting locks on in the first place!

  LIZ: Because you’re totally crazy and paranoid! If I listened to you I wouldn’t venture out without an armed guard!—and even then you wouldn’t trust them!

  GAZ: [shouting] You wanted him to walk in, not me!

  LIZ: That’s insane!

  GAZ: Then what was it with you two?

  LIZ: Time out with someone his own age. He said it himself.

  GAZ: And what was it for you?

  LIZ: A damned nuisance being looked at. I asked him to leave.

  GAZ: [alarmed] Why? What did he do?

  LIZ: He didn’t do anything! He was here with his damn sketch pad. I was surrounded by so many portraits I was starting to doubt my own reality. I wasn’t here for myself anymore, I was here for him. Finally I got fed up: I said he’d exhausted all the clichés about women—if he stayed any longer he could end up painting something real.

  GAZ: You really said that?

  LIZ: I screamed at him. I think he thought he was dealing with some demented fury. He looked at me as if he’d never seen me before and headed for the door. It was great. I’d almost forgotten how it felt.

  GAZ: How what felt?

  LIZ: Being angry. Being in a rage about something. I’d become resigned to things being the way they were—to you being you—

  GAZ: [bitterly] An unreconstructed chauve—

  LIZ: And me being me—and I couldn’t see any way through or beyond that.

  GAZ: You said you always knew where you were with me. You didn’t have to keep wondering what was smouldering underneath.

  LIZ: There seems to have been a lot smouldering I didn’t know about.

  GAZ: You didn’t want to know.

  LIZ: You’re the one who went out to an Indian restaurant and never came back!

  GAZ: Because every time I showed up here all I heard was, ‘Go away, Gaz! Go away!’ You didn’t seem to need me at all!

  LIZ: I needed other things.

  GAZ: What things?

  LIZ: When you get to my age you tend to want to know whether there’s anywhere you do belong, anywhere that does welcome you—particularly the earth you’re standing on.

  GAZ: You belonged with me! What are you talking about?

  LIZ: I’m talking about women! I got a letter from Carla this week; she’s bought an old house at Mount Tambourine with a huge wild garden she’s reclaiming. I wrote back and told her the first thing I planted here was a bunch of parsley, and I was so nervous I had to have a glass of wine first.

  GAZ: Why?

  LIZ: I was afraid Nature might reject me. I’d never had my hands in the earth before with any thought of producing anything. [Pause.] But finally I’ve realised: why should Nature reject me? It can punish me [lifting her arms] for being careless or unobservant or treating it lightly, but it can’t reject me—I’m part of it. I know my place in it now. It doesn’t care about us. We’re simply Nature’s food. That’s what we’re here for. If there’s any other reason, I can’t think of it. [Pause.] If we’re not here for each other.

  A silence.

  GAZ: Why didn’t you tell me this last year?

  LIZ: I didn’t know it last year. I had an instinct that I needed to be here, but I didn’t know why.

  GAZ: Are you taking any vitamins?

  LIZ: Vitamins?

  GAZ: You
should be taking ginseng, and you need B complex, C with bio flavonoids, E, zinc, evening primrose—

  LIZ: You look like you could do with a few vitamins yourself.

  GAZ: Tell me what you need at the shops. Give me a list and I’ll go to the supermarket.

  A silence.

  Liz?

  LIZ: What happened, Gaz?

  GAZ: What do you mean?

  LIZ: What happened to your face?

  GAZ: [turning away] Just give me a list. I’ll get what you need and then I’ll go.

  He moves towards the door.

  LIZ: What’s so awful you can’t tell me about it?

  He turns and looks at her.

  GAZ: I hit her.

  LIZ: You hit her?

  GAZ: I didn’t mean to. It just sort of happened.

  LIZ: Is she all right?

  GAZ: It’s my blood, not hers.

  LIZ: What the hell were you thinking of? You hit her? Why?

  GAZ: I don’t know.

  LIZ: You must know.

  GAZ: I preyed on somebody weaker and more vulnerable, and then I hit her for being weaker and more vulnerable. Simple as that.

  LIZ: I don’t believe it.

  GAZ: I couldn’t believe it either. I told her she could hit me back.

  LIZ: That was thoughtful. I hope she bloody flattened you.

  GAZ: You were right and I was wrong. People don’t change. As Carol said: I’m hopelessly, genetically, fundamentally fucked. When I was at school I just wanted to fit in. Throw a ball straight. Be in the team. Tell dirty jokes. It’s all gone now. A bad dream. I don’t know who that boy was, and I don’t know who the man was. I despised him finally. And what am I left with? Who am I? The worst part is, there’s no one to talk to. Not even myself. I can’t have a conversation with someone who can’t answer, who isn’t even there anymore.

  LIZ: Who is there Gaz?

  He goes to leave, not heeding.

  GAZ: If there’s nothing you want—and I can’t imagine there’s much you want from me anymore—

  LIZ: Why did you come up here?

  GAZ: I don’t know. I’ll stay at Mark’s.