‘I feel like I’m watching a seizure.’
He was standing still while she danced, all staccato shoulders and jerky limbs.
‘You’re so grumpy,’ Audrey said. She didn’t know if he could hear her. ‘You’re so nasty about everything.’
‘You don’t care about anything,’ Julian shouted over the music.
She reached up and kissed him to make him stop talking, hand behind his neck.
A shower of cheers from a nearby group. He took her hand and led her to a sofa in the corner, away from the bodies. She leaned her head on his shoulder. He petted her hair. She didn’t care enough to move.
Pip reappeared and collapsed next to Audrey.
‘I lost you,’ she said, breathless. ‘Let’s go. I want some chips.’
Out on the wet pavement, they separated. Pip went home, and Audrey and Julian began to walk slowly through Hyde Park. Audrey felt dazed.
‘I feel like I’ll never get used to this city. I had no idea we were in Darlinghurst till the cab stopped.’
They walked all the way to the harbour, to the grassy flat by Circular Quay, and sat by the water.
‘This is where you bring a tourist,’ Julian said.
‘Your breath smells like whiskey,’ Audrey said. Her ears were ringing.
‘Your hair smells like a gross bar.’
They were too tired to speak. Audrey lay back on the wet grass and sang the Paul Kelly song about the bus between Melbourne and Sydney.
Julian groaned. ‘Stop it. I feel like I’m in some bad suburban microdrama.’
‘I sort of hate this view,’ she said.
‘Don’t look at it, then.’
He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders, and she was surprised.
They got home just after six o’clock, clattering through the door and down the hall, removing shoes and hissing Sh at each other. Audrey made some tea and two-minute noodles. They ate greedily. She sat at the table. Julian stood and slurped over the kitchen sink. Pip strolled out of the shower wearing a towel. She poured a cup of coffee.
‘You fucking pig,’ she snorted, watching him eat. Steam rose from her bare shoulders.
Julian shrugged. ‘Morning,’ he said, and went on shovelling noodles into his mouth.
Audrey couldn’t stand him.
She’d been planning to fall into bed, but it was almost light. She put on her shoes again, and walked down to the beach. The air was still and cold. She saw the streetlamps glow off, a flock of gulls; people out with their dogs, wrapped up in sensible hats, waterproof jackets and walking shoes. Audrey was in Pip’s black dress, safety-pinned under the armpits, and a big coat. The middle-aged walkers nodded greetings to one another, and offered tentative Good mornings to Audrey.
The sun went up and over the sea. Audrey sat on the sand. She turned up the collar of her coat to protect her ears from the wind.
The sky was grey and yellow. She was done.
She walked home with her hands deep in her coat pockets. At the corner of Beach and Carr she ran into Frank, out on his morning jog.
‘I don’t know why I thought this’d be a good idea. I’m going to spew,’ he said. He stopped running on the spot. ‘Are you all right?’
Audrey looked up at him. ‘I think I need to go home.’
‘Are you all right?’ he said again.
‘I mean home to Melbourne.’
‘Well,’ Frank said, and grinned. ‘What an epiphany!’
They stood there in the grey morning. At last he nodded. He gave her a quick, tight hug. ‘I just plunged a coffee. Go home and get it before Pip does.’
Tombs For Better Times
There was an afternoon tea for her at work, thank-you and good-luck cards, drinks at the Tavern afterwards. Audrey crossed the road to the station and thought it was probably the last time she’d ever walk out of that hospital. The last time she’d take the train out past Parramatta, maybe. The wine was warm in her arms.
It rained. Audrey and Julian went to a pub in Surry Hills, the Clock, sat on the balcony looking down at the wet street. In the cab going home they kissed once. Audrey leaned her head on his shoulder without expecting any tenderness, but he smoothed her cheek, her hair.
It was just turning dark when they got home. Pip was goodhumoured. The three of them pranced around the kitchen and told stories. Audrey mostly listened. Julian and Pip were speaking about memories that did not include her, but not unkindly. When they fell silent Pip said What about when we went to the snow this year and Audrey hooked up with that weird guy at LJ’s? Julian’s face slid sideways, checking on Audrey. She smiled to show him it was okay.
‘Remember,’ Pip said to Julian, ‘you followed them back to his room? Like the older brother.’
Julian was still looking at Audrey. ‘You weren’t well, mate,’ he said.
‘I don’t think I’d had that much to drink.’
‘That was just after you moved in,’ Pip said. ‘I hardly knew you. You were so quiet. I just remember looking up, and in the time it’d taken me to finish my drink, you’d pulled the moves on that guy, and I went She’s more of a loose cannon than I thought.’
Audrey laughed with them because it didn’t matter any more, and maybe it was funny, now.
Just before nine Claire turned up with Elliott in her arms.
‘I’ve got five hundred corsages to do for this debutante,’ she said. ‘Please.’
Julian hoisted El over one shoulder and carried him upstairs. He looked back at Audrey. He mouthed Sorry. She said Don’t be, and she meant it. She helped Julian tuck him into bed.
In the kitchen Pip was making hot toddies. Claire’s face was wet.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just finding him really tough at the minute. It’s never been like this, and I know the timing’s really bad, and I’m sorry—’
‘Hey,’ Julian said. ‘It’s okay. This is the deal, it’s always been the deal. You call whenever you want.’
‘He’s got money for the tuckshop tomorrow, he just needs you to help him add up the order.’
‘We’ll do it in the morning.’
Claire stood up. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘I should go. I’ve got that much to do. Thanks. Sorry for being so nuts.’
‘You okay to drive?’
‘I’m fine, Julian.’
They stood at the front door to wave her off.
‘It is actually a pain in the arse to take him tomorrow morning,’ Julian said to the dark street. ‘Unless I drop him at seven-thirty. Is that legal?’
‘I can take him,’ Audrey said. ‘Leave your car keys out.’
When she left Sydney Julian’s beat-up motorcycle was still in the shed, untouched. She said goodbye to him in the morning. He was going to work and in a rush. Afterwards she went down to the baths. It was a cool morning. There were still tan lines on her skin, but they were already fading. They belonged to a different season.
Claire drove her out to the airport in the evening. Pip cam
e too, sat in the back seat next to Elliott. They left the house hours early, went down to La Perouse for fish and chips. Elliott sang along with the radio in his high, breathy voice. The three women talked rapidly. They sat in the back of Claire’s van to watch the sun go down. There were no flowers, just corrugated flooring that dug into Audrey’s bum through the drop sheet.
‘What’ll you do when you get back to Melbourne?’ Pip asked.
‘I don’t know yet. I feel as though I just left.’ Audrey crumpled her paper napkin. She watched Elliott poking holes in his potato cake.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Claire said.
Audrey nodded. ‘I know.’
They cheered for the sunset, huddled together, the four of them shouting Good job! and Thank you! and You’re getting even better!, clapping and whistling. The toilet block was already locked for the night. Audrey and Pip squatted in the long shadows beside it to piss.
They shared a few glasses of overpriced wine at the airport. Claire and Pip hugged her one by one. Audrey was surprised at how tender they were, how orphaned she felt. Elliott flung his arms around her neck. Claire stood there with her lovely yellow hair falling across her face, and then took Audrey in her arms again.
‘See ya, sweet pea,’ she said in her ear. ‘El and I were thinking of taking a trip to Melbourne in winter, so we’ll see you then.’
And then they left, waving and hooting out the doors. Audrey walked to the gate and sat by the window. Already it was strange to be alone. The airport noise hummed and hissed just loud enough to keep her from falling asleep.
The flight was delayed by one hour, two. Melbourne fog. She phoned Adam. Don’t leave yet. By the time she shuffled onto the plane, it was due to have landed at Tullamarine.
Flying in over Melbourne she saw the glowing grid of streets below. The bay was just a black space. Adam was waiting in the terminal. She’d half-expected Minh to be there, too, but Adam was alone. She was relieved to have him to herself. He took streets she didn’t recognise, past the shipping yards and factories under the bridge. He said So how was it all left with Julian in the end. She didn’t know what to say to make it simple.
‘He can do that thing Nick does,’ she said, ‘when he peels an orange.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Adam said, and they were laughing and the streetlight was falling yellow across his face, and she wanted it to be the two of them in that car forever.
She waited for Vanessa in a café near the office. She was glad for the neutral territory. Something in her was scared of seeing all those people, her friends. She was afraid that she could walk back into the building and nothing would have changed.
Vanessa hugged her, made a fuss of her hair. When she said Tell me about Sydney, heaved her chair closer to the table, it was hard to know what to say.
‘I had really good supervision,’ Audrey said. ‘I learned heaps. They seemed to have a huge budget for professional development. I read lots of trauma theory.’ She watched Vanessa drop an artificial sweetener pill into her coffee. ‘We had a meeting and they offered to extend my contract. I think if I’d started in a clinical setting like that, straight out of uni, I would have stuck with it.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘The house I was living in—I was renting a room—they’re going to sell it. I knew my unpaid leave here was almost up.’ It sounded foolish. Vanessa waited. ‘In paediatric oncology, all you can really do is make everyone more comfortable,’ Audrey said at last.
‘That’s all we do,’ Vanessa said.
‘No, it’s different.’
In the hospital there was no fight. Everyone was already on the kid’s side. The parents trusted her. And still there was no stopping metastasis. It didn’t matter how hard she worked: sometimes the worst still happened.
‘We miss you,’ Vanessa said, ‘and I hope you come back, but I never expected you to. And that’s not a statement on you, it’s a statement on the job.’
‘I want to,’ Audrey said.
‘I want you to, as well, but that’s selfish. Have a think about it.’ Audrey said she would.
By the end of April it was already winter in Melbourne. She went to look at a flat in Yarraville. When she came out the sky was dusky. Walking back to the station she cut through a park where the leaves shivered in the night. On one side, a train clattered towards the western suburbs; on the other, the houses crouched meekly.
At home Adam was sprawled on the couch. He had a glass of wine waiting for her.
‘How’d you go?’
‘Okay.’ She sat down next to him. He reached for the remote control, muted the television. ‘I don’t know if I want to move into another houseful of strangers,’ she said.
‘Wanna live by yourself again?’
‘Yeah. I think I do.’ She fiddled with a loose thread at her sleeve. ‘It’ll be all new. I haven’t lived by myself since I was nineteen.’
‘Have you called Nick?’ Adam asked.
‘I don’t think he and I are very compatible as flatmates anymore.’
‘To let him know you’re back, you dag.’
‘I was joking.’ Audrey was itching in her bones. ‘Do you want to come for a walk?’
It was the season for wet leaves on car windscreens. All the lights were doubled on the wet bitumen. The council bins outside the block of flats had been knocked over in the wind.
‘This is the sort of air that gets in your lungs,’ Adam said grimly, ‘and makes you cold from the inside out.’ But he looped his arm through hers. They crossed the playground, walking towards the beach. They went as far as the Esplanade, stood out the front of the Novotel huddled together while Adam lit a cigarette.
‘You should come and live southside,’ he said. ‘You, me, Minh, Bernie—it’ll be a party.’
‘I don’t want to party with Bernie. I’m looking at a place in Clifton Hill tomorrow. Until I get a car, it has to be somewhere close to work.’
‘So you decided? You’re going back to your old work?’
Audrey pulled her scarf up over her mouth. She wished her coat had a hood. ‘I don’t know. I think so.’
‘Are you happy to be back?’
‘Yes. God, yes.’ She told him about the gig she’d been to in Marrickville, that crippling homesickness, calling Julian to pick her up.
‘You’re a funny thing, going by yourself,’ Adam said.
‘It probably didn’t help. It just felt like something I should be able to do. I didn’t have anyone to go with.’
‘Come to the gig on Friday at the Retreat. That’ll make up for it. You’ll have so many friends you’ll be smothered.’
They’d started back up Robe Street, walking in the centre of the road.
‘It feels weird, being back,’ she said. ‘I’m scared that if I go back to my job, it’ll be like I never left, and things will get bad again.’
She was embarrassed at how childish she sounded. They came to the roundabout and separated instinctively: Audrey went left, Adam went right. He grinned at her.
She thought of bushwalks down at Wilsons Prom, her father singing You take t
he high road and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.
On the other side they fell into step once more.
‘It wasn’t only your job that made you sad,’ Adam said. ‘There were other things.’
‘I’m just frightened of patterns.’
‘I know you are.’
The gig was like Adam had said: an offer of asylum. So much love in the room, so many good faces. Yusra took her hands, made to pull her close, stopped short. She said Oh, but you’re so cold! Johnny hugged her so hard he lifted her off the ground. By the bar Ben put an arm around her, said It’s like you never left. She crouched at the front of the stage with a pint in her hand and watched Adam watching Minh on stage. The lights flashed amber and blue. Adam was standing alone, sucking on a wedge of lime, eyes fixed.
She ran into Tilly by the bathrooms.
‘Here,’ Tilly said, pressing a packet of tissues into her hand, ‘there’s no paper left.’
In these toilets Audrey had squished into a cubicle with Katy so they could go on talking without interruption, holding each other’s handbags, knees pressed together in the stalls. In the courtyard at the Great Northern they’d spat cherry pits into the ashtray. In the courtyard of the Catholic school on Otter Street they’d posed beneath the icon, made up names for new saints, canonised each other.
Audrey hitched up her dress. The pub noise was dull through the walls. Is this how it’ll be here from now on? she thought. You and me everywhere.
Yusra was outside waiting for a cubicle, fixing her lipstick. Audrey handed her the tissues. ‘Here. You’ll need these.’
Katy’s mother still lived in the house in Northcote with its view of the city, but she and Steve had separated. Audrey had read about it happening to couples who’d lost a child. Your youngest daughter turns into dust, and you turn into strangers. Not even your grief is common ground. Audrey thought she could understand.
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