Our Magic Hour

by Jennifer Down

  ‘What about the inquest?’

  ‘I sort of don’t want to talk about it,’ she said. ‘Is that all right? It’s just work.’

  Nick held out his hand for the bag of food. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘When does Emy leave?’

  Nick’s birthday at the Retreat. It was the first time in months Adam had come along. He and Emy smoked and gossiped out the front. Audrey didn’t know what to do with all her relief.

  It seemed like everyone in the pub was there for Nick. Audrey saw him in flashes: his narrow back at the bar, his face under the pool table lights, his hand reaching for hers as she slipped past him on her way to the bathrooms at the back of the pub.

  Yusra was queuing for the toilets, applying a deep red lipstick.

  ‘It’s you!’ she said delightedly, opening her arms, and Audrey said Yus, you’re the warmest person I know. They talked all the way back to the bar, heads bent together while they waited for their beer. They sat in one of the booths. The wallpaper was puckered as if from water damage, patterned with sailing ships.

  Yusra said How have you been holding up. Intelligent eyes, cloud of dark hair, lipstick on her glass. Audrey didn’t have a thing to say.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Yusra said. ‘We don’t have to talk about it. I’m sorry.’

  They were weepy-eyed laughing minutes later.

  ‘I think changing hands should be a signal. Wrap it up. We’re done here,’ Audrey said.

  ‘Same if you have to stop for a drink break while you’re giving head.’

  Emy, then Ben, slid in beside her on the seat. Adam’s face appeared across the table.

  ‘I am drinking Collingwood,’ he announced.

  ‘Is it okay?’ asked Yusra.

  ‘Well—I don’t know.’

  Loud, happy voices. Warm bodies, safety in numbers. It was almost normal.

  Nick and Audrey stayed in bed all morning, laughing feebly at themselves.

  ‘I don’t remember getting home,’ Nick said. ‘It’s been a long time since that happened.’

  ‘Do you remember vomiting in the shower?’

  ‘Filthy.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, Spence.’

  Audrey’s mouth tasted of stale party. ‘Do you want to go for a drive?’ she asked.

  ‘I feel pretty seedy.’

  ‘Fresh air,’ she said. ‘Let’s go over to Williamstown.’ His hand found hers under the blankets.

  Everything was funny in an indulgent, sleepy way. Nick winced as he leaned forwards to pull on his boots. Audrey waited for him to wash his face. When he saw her lying on the bed in her coat, he said, ‘Well, come on, are we going or not?’

  ‘Don’t know if I can be bothered,’ she said, and they laughed again.

  ‘What a bloody effort.’

  At the gate Nick gestured for the car keys.

  ‘Do you want me to drive?’ Audrey asked.

  ‘It’s okay. I’d rather have something to concentrate on.’

  They rolled over the bridge. Audrey wound down the window, leaned her arms on the ledge. The river and the factories whipped by outside. Her hair licked her face. She glanced at Nick. He loved driving with the windows down even when it was cold.

  ‘You know that sort of guilt you have when you’re a kid?’ Audrey said.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Like—not wanting to go somewhere with one parent, or having to choose whose car to ride in. Being disappointed by a gift. Not being satisfied by an explanation,’ she said. Not protecting one parent from the other.

  Nick looked at her quickly. ‘What made you think of that?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  She felt shy. He smiled at her, but his brows were drawn together. Maybe he was trying to understand. She wished she hadn’t said anything.

  They fell asleep on the grass by the water, then it was late in the day, and colder. Driving home Audrey kept an eye out for the Backwash. Nick fiddled with the radio, settling on Johnny Cash. Audrey glanced at him incredulously, and he began to sing along, word-for-word, and she said You’re a dag, and he pulled the car over in the carpark by the refinery. Audrey slipped out of her seatbelt to lean over him. She kissed him, clutched at his jacket.

  ‘Someone will see us,’ Nick said. His mouth found her neck. Johnny Cash ended. There was a thick silence before the announcer started talking, dead air. Audrey was kissing Nick’s eyelids, tugging at his jeans.

  ‘It’s like it was before,’ he said, all in a breath.

  Audrey sat back. Her hands fell from his chest. ‘What do you mean, before?’ she said.

  ‘Come on, Spence.’

  Audrey suddenly felt foolish, straddling him in the car like a teenager. She slumped onto the passenger seat. She looked out at the power station rising in the sky.

  ‘I feel bad when I forget about her for an hour,’ she said.

  ‘I know, and I don’t want to forget,’ Nick said. ‘I just feel like it’s everywhere. We talk about it all the time.’ He was wild in the eyes.

  Audrey nodded. ‘Do you want to get out for a bit?’

  They walked out on the boardwalk past the mangroves. She hiked a leg over the rail; so did he. The city seemed a good thing to look at: its lights were just coming on, the air was pretty in the cooling hour. Audrey did not like having the West Gate Bridge looming behind her. She couldn’t say why it seemed so sinister. The last time she’d been here was with Katy, but she couldn’t say that, either.

  Her fingers were cold. She had to flex her hands to make them real again.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ she said.

  ‘Been a good one. Thanks for last night.’

  Nick’s legs dangled over the water. He laid his head on her shoulder. Audrey stared at the oil terminal. The big tanks sat squat.

  They walked all the way out to the rocks and sat there. The sun fell buttery from the pylons, beamed gold off the river. Audrey looked towards the chainlink fence with its warning sign, Border Control, and saw three rabbits run out to the Mobil drums, but they were gone before she could say anything. Nick was watching the punt chugging towards Fishermans Bend. Audrey got up and walked to the fence. She wondered if she’d imagined the rabbits.

  ‘I don’t know if I locked the car,’ Nick called suddenly. They looked at each other again. Nick shivered. He said, ‘We’d better go back.’

  The Real Wild

  Before Emy’s going-away party Audrey and Nick got drunk at home, then they were running late and Nick still hadn’t written a message in the card, and while he was bent over the table trying to think of what to write, ‘Mesopotamia’ came on the radio and Audrey did a silly dance with flailing arms. Nick put his head down on the table. He was coming off a fourteen-hour shift.

  ‘Wake up,’ said Audrey, breathless. ‘This is very serious. We’re going to a party.’ She stopped jumping around. ‘You don’t have to come if you’re too wrecked,’ she said.

  He lifted his head. ‘Nah, I’m scared you might dance like that in public.’

  They ar
rived just as the speeches were starting, and hung back in the doorway. Audrey looked around the room. She waved at Adam. Everyone was standing close, flush-faced, ready to raise their bottles and glasses. On the wall over the couch, colourful cut-out letters read SAYONARA EMY!

  Patrick had his arm around Emy in the centre of the room.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘what’s the first thing you see at the start of Lost in Translation?’

  ‘Scarlett Johansson’s exquisite arse in those see-through undies!’ Emy shouted.

  ‘A thing of beauty.’ Patrick cleared his throat. ‘We thought it’d be nice if you had something to remind you of us. So we had a little photo shoot—a couple, actually…’ He produced a bound album and opened it: pasted inside, pictures of their friends pouting and clowning in flesh-toned underwear.

  ‘This is disgusting,’ Emy said, ‘it’s great.’ She shrieked when she got to the photo of Nick, thin and hairy and mock-wistful, gazing out a window in his apricot-coloured jocks. A few wolf-whistles went up, faces turned to Audrey and Nick. Someone called You’re a lucky woman, Audrey.

  In the bathroom later, Emy collapsed onto the toilet and Audrey sat on the tiles with her back against the door.

  ‘I’m fucked,’ Emy announced cheerfully. She kicked off her knickers. ‘I’m just the safe side of a really lavish vomit.’

  ‘Where’s Ben? Is he here?’

  ‘He went to the servo to get some more ice. He’s in a bit of a shit about this whole thing. We’re not really sure what we’re going to do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Audrey said.

  ‘I said a long-distance relationship might be hard work. Now he’s sulking.’ Emy stood up and examined her reflection. She turned to Audrey. ‘It’ll sort itself out,’ she said. Audrey wanted to hold her tightly. Someone had put a daisy in an empty VB bottle on top of the cistern.

  Drinking, dancing, talking in the bathroom, out in the yard: Audrey lost Nick for a while, and found him in the hallway under the bald light bulb.

  ‘Hey,’ she said in his ear. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Can we talk?’ His voice was shivery.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, can we talk? I’m freaking out.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ Audrey asked. She looked at his pupils. ‘Have you taken something?’

  ‘Jordy gave me something to keep me going.’

  ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘I feel heaps better. Can we just talk for a second?’ he said again.

  Audrey followed him down the back of the house to the laundry.

  ‘I’ve been feeling really bad about Katy,’ said Nick. ‘I just keep thinking there must’ve been something we could have done. We must’ve missed something.’

  Audrey leaned against the washing machine. The room was quiet and cold. She felt the blood run faster through her body. ‘I can’t talk to you about this tonight, Nick.’

  ‘What if we just don’t listen to one another? Maybe she tried to give us hints. I keep thinking about the night before, when everyone was round at our place. We must have missed something. I feel horrible.’

  ‘It’s the speed.’

  ‘It’s fucking not.’ Mad eyes. Audrey was scared to touch him. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it, all the time. Things keep happening so quickly, and we never stop to process any of it. Your mum’s always threatening suicide. We just ignore her.’

  ‘You don’t know her like I do. She’s been threatening it since I was nine.’

  ‘We don’t listen to one another,’ Nick said again, voice rising. ‘You’re not listening now.’ He was hysterical, arms flung out.

  Audrey gave a short laugh. ‘Are we having an argument?’ she asked.

  Nick drew back, and then his fist was in the wall. White shreds and dust fell to the ground like salt as pulled out his hand. He stared at it; cradled it with his other. There was a rough hole in the plaster.

  Audrey looked at the wall. That old familiar feeling was in her arms. Enervation, adrenaline: too much of one of them. When she and Irène were children they’d called it the floppy arms before they stopped talking about it.

  She stood very still.

  Patrick appeared at the door. ‘Everything okay?’ He saw the jagged hole. ‘Fuck, mate,’ he said. He looked from the plaster to Nick to Audrey, pressed right into the corner of the room.

  Nick stared goggle-eyed at the wall. You fucking idiot, Audrey wanted to say, but even her mouth was weak. She left him standing there with Patrick.

  She went to the kitchen and got another drink. Adam came looking for her.

  ‘Ben just told me what happened,’ he said. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he—’

  ‘He did a line of speed and put his fist through a wall.’ She saw something flicker across Adam’s face. She remembered that expression, the one she hadn’t seen for years, the one Katy made when she saw Audrey’s bruises at the swimming pool when they were fourteen. Now Adam was ready to make pitying noises in his throat. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to go outside for a bit.’

  ‘Do you want me to come?’

  ‘Would you mind if I just—if I were just by myself?’

  She finished her wine in the backyard. She was watery in the legs. She watched a possum run along the fence and disappear into the lantana below. Nick came and stood beside her. She couldn’t look at him. She watched the black shapes of the garden moving in the night.

  ‘I don’t know why I did that,’ he said.

  Audrey dropped her head. ‘No.’

  ‘I was just so tired, and it’s making me loopy. But that’s not an excuse.’

  Audrey folded her arms and turned to him. ‘My dad did that once, when he missed Maman’s face. There is no excuse.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Nick said. He was ashen, a cartoon of a man pleading. He knew her well enough to feel the weight of his mistake. ‘I’ve never done that before,’ he said. ‘It’s not me. I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry.’

  Audrey didn’t want to go back inside to the party or stand out here with him, but there were no other choices. She didn’t want him to keep apologising.

  ‘It’s okay. Let’s just go.’

  He said Sorry again as they arrived home, and Audrey said It’s okay again.

  Inside she washed the dishes they’d left in the sink.

  ‘I’d never do what your dad did,’ Nick said, standing behind her.

  ‘I know that.’

  He touched her arm. She started. The glasses skittered on the drying rack. Nick took a step back, bewildered.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ Audrey said. ‘I can’t help it.’ She couldn’t believe how quickly it had happened, this new pain. She was twenty-four; it was seven years since her father had last hit her. Nick had only ever known her with a crooked nose, a break that had happened in the Wellington Street flats and never quite healed straight. Stringy blood in her throat and her eyes, but when she’d got in front of the mirror it was all coming from her nose and it wasn’t as bad as
she’d thought. Sylvie had wiped the snot and blood from her cheeks with a warm washcloth. Audrey was fifteen.

  Nick knew the story. Audrey told him everything eventually.

  In bed they took turns being still.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Audrey said.

  ‘Better than before. I just can’t drop off. My body’s so tired, but my head isn’t.’ He clutched the quilt to his chest. ‘I shouldn’t have come tonight. I should’ve stayed home and crashed.’

  ‘How much did you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not that much. I just freaked out.’ He rolled over, face to the ceiling. ‘It’s gone now. I can’t feel it any more.’

  The next time she glanced over he was asleep. His scratched, swollen hand lay on the pillow. It was purple. His middle knuckle seemed to have disappeared. It looked sick, not sinister.

  Audrey remembered the scene in A Clockwork Orange when Alex’s eyes are held open with metal claws. She thought about hair. Someone had told her it keeps growing even after you die. She thought about her infancy, herself and Irène as children. With their mother they were mes filles or mes p’tites. When Neil was home, they were the girls once more. They slipped in and out of their selves like hands in and out of pockets. At work now she knew the word for it: hypervigilant, she’d say, meaning children who slept with one eye open, little hardened invertebrates.

  They’d kept a sickly rabbit when they were living in the New Street flats. It was allowed to hop around the apartment; it knew to shit in its box. Audrey and Irène poked bits of lettuce and broccoli into its anxious pink mouth, but Neil loved it most. It sat on his lap like a cat while he read. When he was a good drunk, mawkish and weepy, he’d stroke the rabbit’s ears and bellow about man and nature, and the creature would cower on his knees. Audrey was twelve. She read in a library book that rabbits could die of fright. ‘Winter gardens,’ Neil would drone, ‘were all part of that, showing man’s dominance over nature, the triumph of the artificial over the real wild.’ Audrey watched the rabbit, clenched and petrified in her father’s lap, and imagined its heart beating furiously.