‘Such an old-fashioned way of saying it,’ Nick said. ‘Remember me to her.’
They were already forgetting each other.
Audrey threw the orange skin into the compost bin. She finished her wine standing by the kitchen sink. Nick staggered down the hallway to the bedroom. ‘I’m rooted.’ Audrey followed him, but stopped in the doorway. He sat on the bed, unlacing his boots, and he looked surprised when he saw her standing there at the threshold, still in her coat.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I didn’t think—I don’t want to—’
‘Christ, Audrey, I don’t want to, either. Just get into bed.’ He turned around while she undressed. She stripped to her stockings, and pulled on an old jumper of Nick’s. It fell to her thighs in slack folds. She felt ugly and small.
They faced each other on the mattress. Cold space between them: they were not enough to fill the bed.
‘I read your book,’ Nick said.
‘Which book?’
‘L’Assommoir, however you say it. The French one you’ve been re-reading. I went to the library and got it in English.’ Audrey stared at him. ‘Here,’ he said, reaching for the paperback. Its pages were age-softened and discoloured; it smelled fusty and dank. She opened the book and unfolded all the turned-in corners before she said anything.
‘How did you find it?’
‘Fucken long.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t know if I’m just a dickhead, and I know your dad loved Zola, but I didn’t get it. I didn’t get what his big message was.’
‘At the time it was all science and reason. They thought everything was hereditary back then. You know, if you’re born into—’
‘No, I get that, but what’s the point of it? If you’re fucked, you’re fucked, that’s it, and you can’t do anything about it?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I don’t think it’s true,’ he said. Audrey put her hands to her face. Her fingers smelled like oranges. ‘Spence? I don’t think it’s true. That was a hundred and fifty years ago.’
Audrey didn’t answer. They curled like babies and sleep swarmed in.
In the early morning they sat on the back step looking out at the fence. The sky was wide and chalky. The magpies sang. Audrey’s bum was cold. She kept passing her hands through the steam purling from her tea.
‘Remember that time we both got that lurg after Christmas, and we didn’t leave the house for a week?’
‘Yeah,’ Audrey said. ‘It was so hot, remember?’
Nick had come down with it first, a virus that made him sweat and shake and vomit. Audrey dampened washcloths under the bathroom tap and made ice cubes from orange juice and kept the blinds drawn until she was sick too, clammy and aching. Every morning they got up and changed the bedsheets, and collapsed again, swaddled in their sickness. They joked about painting an X on the door. One sweltering night just before New Year’s they sat in front of the pedestal fan watching Twin Peaks, and Audrey fell in and out of fever dreams about red rooms and mountain roads.
‘You working today?’ she asked.
‘Not till tonight. You?’
‘No, I’m taking a couple of days off. I’ve got a lot of time in lieu.’
Nick nodded. He stretched out his legs so that his toes touched the weeds poking through the cracked pavers. ‘Wanna go and get breakfast?’
‘I’d better not. I’ve got to go round to Bern’s and give him a driving lesson. His test’s coming up.’
Nick tipped his tea down the gully trap. Audrey stood to leave. They were done.
Audrey tried to make a routine. She got up, ate breakfast with Adam, walked to Barkly Street for coffee, then came home and settled to a day’s work. She was full of steel. She applied for positions with migrant aid centres, palliative care facilities, out-of-home care organisations. She was diligent. She wrote painstaking responses to dozens of selection criteria, made adjustments to her CV, hunched over drafts of cover letters. Sometimes when Adam came home he’d look over her handwritten list of jobs or proofread an application. It looks like a lot, he’d say. When Audrey talked about finding her own place or overstaying her welcome, he brushed her off. You can’t leave. I’ll be lonely without you.
Vanessa was kind. She sent messages. Trapeze called for a reference. Peter Mac called. Odyssey House called. There were a few interviews. Audrey went along in too-formal clothes, feeling like a fraud.
Some afternoons she filled Adam’s bathtub and lay there to read. What you do for children, you make a bath.
Adam’s key in the lock. She half-expected Minh’s voice, too, but it was all quiet.
‘You home?’ he called.
‘In the bathroom.’ The door swung open. She scrambled to cover herself.
‘Relax. I don’t want to bloody look at you.’
‘Are you going to piss? I’ll get out.’
‘I’m not going to piss,’ he said. He slid down the wall to sit beside the tub. ‘What book?’ he asked. Audrey held up the cover. ‘Read me something.’
She read half a page, uncertainly. The story was about a Belgian man on a train. Wartime. Rolling hills and young love and danger everywhere. It was a skinny book, so Audrey was persevering with it.
‘Westmead called today,’ she said. She set the book on the tiles.
‘The hospital in Sydney?’
She nodded.
‘I didn’t know you’d applied there.’
‘They had a position in the paediatric oncology ward.’
‘Kids with cancer,’ Adam said, ‘that’d be heaps more uplifting than your old work.’
‘Well, they offered me the job.’
‘Good on you! That’ll make you more confident with the others.’
‘I think I want to take it,’ Audrey said.
Adam picked up the book and thumbed through it. ‘Is that a bit rash?’ he said.
‘I’ve thought about it.’ He glanced at her. ‘Irène said something a while ago. Bernie’s almost done with school. Maman doesn’t really need me like I think she does. There’s nothing keeping me here. And I can’t explain it, but there are so many places I can’t stand here since Katy. And Nick. It’s like I’ve wrecked them all.’
‘You didn’t wreck them,’ Adam said.
The water had turned tepid. Audrey was cold. ‘I can’t live here with you forever,’ she said.
‘I didn’t mean to sound negative,’ Adam said. ‘I just want you to do it for the right reasons, not because everything’s gone to shit.’
‘I’m not. I want a change.’
‘Okay. Then it’s great.’ He stood up and passed her a towel. ‘I’ve got a couple of friends in Sydney. I could see if they know anyone who needs a flatmate.’
‘Thanks, Adam.’
He was leaning against the sink, back to the mirror. He gave a small smile. He said I love you.
Yusra phoned to see if Audrey was coming to Tilly’s birthday, made it sound casual. ‘I told her you had a bit going on.’
‘Thanks,’ Audrey said.
; ‘And actually, I’m pretty stuffed this week. I don’t know if I’m up to it, either. Do you feel like coming round here?’
Yusra cooked fish. Audrey sat on the bench and watched her. When she sliced the onions, her eyes wept so much she was blinded. She said Oh—it’s a really bad one and put down the knife. Audrey offered to take over, and then they were both bent double, pressing palms to their eyes, laughing. Yusra’s mascara had run down to her chin.
‘We look miserable,’ Audrey said.
‘You know what I need,’ Yusra said. She disappeared into her bedroom, and emerged a moment later wearing swimming goggles. She struck a pin-up pose in the doorway.
Adam came by late, alone, halfway to drunk. He’d walked from the train station, and Audrey felt the stinging cold on his cheek when she kissed it.
‘I’ve got some K,’ he announced.
The three of them climbed into Yusra’s bed and sat shoulder to shoulder against the wall, wrapped in blankets.
‘I don’t think I want any,’ Audrey said.
‘Go on,’ Yusra said. ‘It’ll just make everything go sideways for a bit.’
It didn’t make things go sideways; it only made her sleepy. She dozed between their warm bodies. She heard Adam say I thought the music had been going the whole time. She heard Yusra say Don’t do any more yet. Before she fell asleep properly, hot in the heart, she heard Yusra say I don’t want you to go. It was so much like things had been with Katy, the three of them curled beneath a doona, that she had to think very carefully about where she was.
Audrey borrowed Adam’s car and drove over to Charles Street.
‘You could have just let yourself in,’ Nick said.
‘I thought you were working today.’
‘Not till tonight.’ He stepped aside. The house still smelled like their house. Dust motes floated in the hall.
She turned to face him. ‘I’m just coming back to get some things,’ she said. ‘I got a job in Sydney.’
‘Sydney. Congratulations.’
He stood with his hands in his pockets.
‘So it’s okay if I—I’ll just be in the bedroom—?’
‘Yeah, knock yourself out.’
She worked efficiently, packing her clothes and shoes neatly into bags. Nick helped her cart boxes of books out to the car. Afterwards they stood on the pavement.
‘Thank you. Thanks for helping me with my stuff.’
‘That’s okay.’
She wrapped her scarf around her neck. Nick’s face lightened; he gave a strange laugh.
‘You’ve sort of stopped looking like a person wearing a coat,’ he said. ‘You look like a coat with a person in it.’
‘I’m sorry. Don’t be sad.’
‘You want me to be the bad guy.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘I can’t make you feel better,’ Nick said. ‘Do you understand that? So don’t, don’t apologise.’
Audrey nodded at the footpath, arms folded across her chest.
‘I’ll write. Let you know my address up there.’
‘Yeah, let me know.’ He stepped towards her and they hugged sharply, bone and bone. ‘Take care, Spence. Look after yourself.’
‘You too.’ She touched his arm. ‘See you.’
Badlands
In Sydney the light was strong. Audrey’s shadow was more certain. In the days before her job began, she walked the streets as a tourist. She sent postcards home with pictures of the glittering harbour. In Glebe she found a book of Marjorie Barnard’s short stories. It had been raining and the sky was greenish. Audrey paced back and forth in front of the bus stop and looked down the streets that sloped to the city. The glass of the tall buildings turned gold and winked, then the windows became hundreds of lit squares, and the weird mushroomy clouds pitched and rolled.
She sat on a crowded train on another rainy day. The girl opposite her was reading: her head bent forwards into the book, her serious brows drawn together. She had milky skin and thick arms. When she stood to get off the train, their legs brushed, smooth, shaved knees, and Audrey could have shuddered: longing rushed into her pelvis. She felt savage. She was surprised when anyone spoke to her.
She moved in with Adam’s friend Claire for the first few weeks. Sweet, languid Claire, who welcomed her wholeheartedly, who boiled eggs and made cups of tea in the morning. She and Adam had met in a hostel in Byron Bay—We were in a four-bed dorm, and the other two people started fucking one night, and we had to evacuate, Adam had explained, though Claire told it differently. There were always friends calling by the house. Audrey was grateful for the noise. For three weeks she occupied the bright room at the end of the hallway. Claire’s son, Elliott, six years old and clever, slept in the room opposite. Audrey heard him moving around in there at night, turning lights off and on, singing to himself and reading aloud, shuffling down the hall to his mother’s bedroom.
The Redfern streets were sleepy in the mornings. The train to the hospital took half an hour. Just before Westmead there was a mason with a sign that said MONUMENTAL MEMORIALS and sometimes Audrey chanted the words to herself like a skipping rhyme while she walked. The big hospital was a terrifying, brutalist building. It seemed to take up the entire suburb. The Children’s Hospital was at the end of the road, orange and terracotta coloured, opposite flats and motels. It was quiet in the mornings, but by the time Audrey left for the day, there were kids on the play equipment out front and people smoking by the entrance, waiting at the bus stop. Everyone wore crabbed, hesitant smiles.
The Camperdown ward staff seemed surprised when she said she’d come from child protection. They all said how young she looked. Audrey worked to remember names and answers to questions. She tried to summon up things from the only hospital placement she’d ever done, years ago. That first week was a deluge.
On Friday afternoon she walked to the station with one of the other workers. They passed the university, the grim strip of shops, the sign in the window of the Westmead Tavern that said LUCKY LOUNGE, making small talk.
‘You must be buggered,’ the woman said. ‘Anytime you start a new job it’s like that. Trying to suss out who’s who in the zoo, take it all in as fast as you can, not muck up. You’ll be right.’
Audrey felt a flash of gratitude for her. She couldn’t think of her name when they said goodbye. They waved at each other from different platforms.
Claire went out with a friend and Audrey offered to look after Elliott.
‘Let’s go down to the sea,’ he said. They buttoned their jackets and caught the bus to the beach, where they took off their shoes and waded in the cold water. Elliott collected shells and bits of glass in a leather purse that had once belonged to Claire. His face was set in a determined grimace against the wind. Eventually he relaxed and told stories and joked with her. Audrey was glad for the company.
After a while Elliott wandered further up the beach. Audrey sat on the sand and took out her book. When he came back he was grinning.
‘Do you know,’ he said, sitting down beside her, ‘there’s a man up there having a wank.’ Something split inside Audrey and laughter came flying out.
‘Nup.’
‘Sophisticated. Cool.’
‘Charming?’
‘Yeah, charming, too.’
Elliott inched his small bum closer to hers. ‘I’m going to tell Claire she’s suave.’ He fiddled with the frayed strap on his purse. ‘I always want to live with Claire,’ he said. ‘I’m going to live with her forever.’ His long lashes flickered in earnest. Audrey smiled at his devotion.
It was late afternoon by the time they caught the bus home again. The wind was cold and dry. Elliott examined his bag full of sand and shells. Audrey watched the grey sky through the window.
‘Hey Audrey?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is your mum beautiful like Claire?’
‘She’s different to Claire.’
Elliott thought about it. ‘Claire’s the kind of beautiful that if she does a handstand and her legs go in the air and everyone sees her undies no one cares.’
‘You’re probably right.’
They made it home. Elliott sang all the way. He hurled his body around the footpath as he sang, giddy. He liked to test Audrey. Do you know where that train’s going? Do you know when Claire’s coming home? Do you know—as they crossed the park on Louis Street with its brick-wall mural of the Aboriginal flag—what that painting means?
Claire came back at teatime with a tall man whose head was bent into the collar of his jacket. His hair was covering his eyes and he looked surly, but he softened when he saw Elliott.
‘Hello, mate.’
‘Hola, Julian. Hi, Claire.’
‘Hey, Rambo. What’d you do today?’
‘Went to the beach.’
‘The beach?’ shrieked Claire. ‘But it’s fucken c-o-o-o-ld!’ The three of them pushed into the warm kitchen, where Audrey was making soup. Claire introduced everyone with flapping hands and a smile that showed her teeth.
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