Our Magic Hour

by Jennifer Down

  She thought how strange it was to say Yes to his tentative text message when they’d taught themselves to be alone. She did not know what he wanted. She remembered the way he’d looked telling her We can fix this. Him saying I love you and it’s not enough. She’d said You like me when I’m weak, is that it? and he’d snapped Don’t be fucken ridiculous.

  It was different now. She was trying to make sense of it.

  The band finished and the smokers emptied into the courtyard. Audrey and Nick sat on the carpeted stair in the middle of the floor. They were not talking. The room was colder without all the bodies. Across the room a couple leaned against the bricks, kissing. Clinking glass and laughter came in gasps with the opening and closing of the door, and there was music playing over the speakers.

  ‘Want another drink?’ she asked.

  Nick murmured a thanks. She looked back at him from the bar. He was rubbing his neck with one hand, watching the room’s dim drama.

  She crouched beside him. ‘What are you thinking about?’

  He took the glass. ‘Do you remember when you put Katy’s coat on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You wore it once, one night, you put it on—’

  ‘What,’ Audrey said, ‘after she—’

  ‘Yes.’

  Audrey shook her head. She meant to say I don’t remember a thing, but she said I don’t feel a thing instead.

  ‘I was really sort of appalled by it,’ he said. ‘I felt…disgusted? I think that was the first time.’

  Audrey sat down properly. She wanted to touch him but she was afraid.

  ‘What else?’ she asked.

  ‘Remember when we made the fort?’

  ‘You made it,’ she said. ‘You did it for me.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can do that again. If that’s what you want. And I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not asking for anything.’

  ‘I know you’re not. You never do.’ He was smiling like a sick child. ‘It’s hard being in love with the saddest person in the world.’ Audrey said nothing. Her hands were in the prayer position between her thighs.

  ‘I know that’s a dick thing to say. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m the one who couldn’t help you out of it. But it’s hard. Or I’m not very good at it.’

  ‘I want it to be different,’ she said.

  ‘So do I.’

  The bandroom was almost empty. Everyone had disappeared into the front bar or the courtyard.

  ‘We’re the last ones here,’ Nick said.

  Outside they started walking in the direction of Hoddle Street, towards the house.

  Audrey turned to him at the traffic lights.

  ‘Will it be like this forever?’ she asked.

  He kissed her gently. He said I’m sorry.

  ‘We’re both very sorry,’ she said. ‘I am going to get a cab.’

  He’s sad, she said to her sister. It was a Saturday afternoon. They met at a café, sat out in the courtyard because it seemed too sunny a day to waste, but they were both rugged up.

  ‘Relationship break-up and dad cancer—they’d be high up there on the list of awful life events,’ Irène said. ‘I don’t imagine either of us’d be cracking funnies, either.’

  She had the baby on her lap. He was teething on a piece of celery, looking right at Audrey.

  ‘He said I don’t know if I can do it again, like I’d drained him,’ Audrey said, ‘and I understood it, because that’s how I’ve felt with Maman. It’s hard to be that person.’

  ‘It’s hard to be the sick person, too,’ Irène said calmly.

  They ordered a bagel to share. Audrey finished her half in the time it took her sister to manage a bite. She held out her arms for Lucas, bounced him on her lap. Irène reached across the table. She pulled the knitted hat down over his ears, smiled at them. She sat down and began to eat.

  Nick phoned that evening. He apologised. His voice was threadbare. Audrey was alone at Bernie’s, reading in bed to keep warm. She said Do you want to come over, and she heard him think about it, and he said I’m pretty knackered, mate. He said Listen, Dad’s last round of chemo’s on Thursday. I know it’s weird, but I just thought I’d—and she was saying Yes, yes, of course before he’d got the words out.

  She hung up and wondered how long they’d keep running to each other, now that they’d started.

  Audrey left the office at midday. It was raining lightly. She met Nick at the corner of Victoria Parade.

  At the entrance to the Freemasons she paused. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t come. I haven’t even been around, and your poor dad—I don’t want to intrude.’

  Nick looked at his feet. ‘Honestly, he’d be happy to see you. But if you don’t want to come, I get it.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said.

  It was warm inside. Nick knew the corridors. He paused outside one of the rooms and she dropped back. He put a finger to his lips.

  ‘Sh. Wait here a second,’ he whispered. He opened the door. ‘Hey, old man.’

  ‘Hullo! I didn’t know you were coming in.’

  ‘It’s your last dose. We should celebrate.’

  ‘Yeah, I told the doc to pump some champagne through the cannula, but she didn’t listen.’ Audrey leaned against the wall. There was a gentle mechanical humming, a sour hospital smell that reminded her of Sydney. She ran her fingers over the plaster and listened to their muffled voices.

  ‘Listen, I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  ‘Don’t tire him out, darling.’ Paula.

  ‘It’s okay, Mum. It’s a visitor.’ Nick stuck his head out the door, and ushered Audrey into the room. Nick’s mother stood to embrace her. The room smelled of chemicals and Paula’s perfume.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Audrey said, turning to Doug. His hair was white and downy. He was an old man in a chair with a hospital blanket over his legs.

  ‘After today, it’s all over, red rover. It’ll be good to finish,’ he said. He motioned for her to sit. ‘You back for good?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Audrey said, ‘I’ve come home.’

  They all looked at one another. Nobody said anything.

  ‘Well, thanks for coming in, love,’ Doug said. ‘You’ve been the brightest face I’ve seen in a while.’ It was raining harder now. A nurse came in. She turned on the brash fluorescent light. She checked Doug’s intravenous line, asked how he was feeling. There were pearly beads of sweat on his upper lip. His mouth was waxy. Audrey could see his feet trembling beneath the thin comforter. I’m okay, said Doug. I’m doing okay. This is Audrey, he said. The nurse stayed to talk a while. When she left, the Lukovics all said how lovely the staff were.

  There was a program on travel in Victoria on the television.

  ‘That’s what I’m going to do once this is all done,’ Doug said, ‘I’m going to buy a caravan. We’ll go round Australia. What do you think, Paula?’

  Paula was hemming a skirt. She looked up over her glasses, pins between lips, and smiled.

 
‘If it’s a nice caravan, with its own shower and toilet. And if you help to clean it.’

  ‘You don’t clean a bloody caravan, you whacker.’

  ‘You do if you bloody live in it.’

  Audrey looked at Nick, who looked away with a twisted face.

  He got up and left after a while, and Audrey sat with his parents. They asked about Sydney, about her job and her friends. It was kind-hearted interest. It made her sad. She asked after Will. He’d finished his degree. He’d been travelling. They’d told him not to come home when Doug started treatment, but of course he did.

  After half an hour, Doug closed his eyes and asked Paula to pass him the green plastic kidney dish. Audrey left them alone.

  She found Nick on the steps out the front of the hospital, head bowed. She sat beside him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to his knees. ‘He’s going to be okay. He looks really good. The specialist said he’s doing better than they could have imagined.’ Audrey cradled him. He put a hand over his face. She felt him shaking. ‘He’s going to be okay. I don’t know why I’m crying.’

  He shook and she held him. They sat there until he was done.

  They started walking in the wrong direction, through the Fitzroy Gardens. It had stopped raining. They moved slowly and without touching.

  ‘Thanks for coming today,’ Nick said. ‘It means a lot.’

  ‘I wish I’d known sooner.’ She wrapped her coat tighter around herself. Her neck was cold, bare where her hair had been cut. ‘We don’t have to keep hanging out. I just wanted to see you.’

  ‘I know. I missed you, too.’

  ‘We could be better,’ Audrey said. He smiled, but not at her. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What’s that face for?’

  ‘That’s the Audrey Spencer defensive pose. Head bent forwards, arms crossed. Making yourself as small as you can.’ Nick stopped walking to mimic her.

  ‘The other night, when you said you didn’t know if you could do it again.’

  ‘That was a shitty thing to say.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I get it. I’m glad you said it.’

  ‘No. The way it came out made it sound like the onus should be on you all the time, and that’s not fair.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I think,’ Nick said, ‘when it ended up so bad, it’s hard to imagine things being good again.’

  They blinked at the wind. Audrey folded her arms across her chest before she could stop herself, and Nick laughed aloud. ‘What do you want, Audrey?’

  ‘It could happen again,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  She looked away. He bent his head and kissed her where her hair was parted. They were cocooned there for a second. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s going to rain again.’

  In the kitchen at Charles Street she tried to put together the ingredients for a soup. Nick trailed after her.

  ‘Hey Spence.’

  ‘What.’

  ‘Stop moving away from me.’

  Lead-ring eyes, slow smile. It was almost normal.

  They sat in front of the television. Nick fell asleep halfway through the show. When Audrey got up to switch it off, tell him to go to bed, he opened his eyes.

  ‘I thought I might have some friends over for my birthday next week,’ he said, ‘our friends. Do a potluck dinner here. Would that be weird?’

  ‘I don’t know. Only as weird as you make it.’

  ‘Tell me the rules,’ he said, feigning panic, grabbing at her arms.

  All she could think was Give it back, give it back, give it back.

  They drove out to Tyabb together. Audrey watched the road. When she picked at her cuticles, he reached for her hand.

  They pulled into the drive and sat for a moment, looking at the old house. The weatherboards were flaking, the hinges rusting in the salt air. The verandah had rotted away in places.

  ‘It looks old, doesn’t it.’

  Nick said nothing.

  Sylvie produced tea and biscuits. She sat twisting her hands, asking questions, telling stories. Her cigarettes waited in their pack on the coffee table. When Nick offered to go out and chop some wood for her, she accepted graciously. C’est un vrai gentilhomme, she muttered.

  The wind roared in the rafters.

  ‘How’s the new job going?’ Audrey asked.

  Now Sylvie reached for a cigarette. ‘I want it to be temporary,’ she said. ‘The pay is very bad. Fifteen dollars an hour.’

  ‘That’s absurd. Do you need money?’

  ‘No,’ Sylvie said. ‘It’s okay. I have enough.’

  ‘Fifteen bucks—that’s what I used to get working at the servo when I was at uni. You’re worth more than that.’

  An odd expression came over Sylvie’s face. She sat forwards with her legs spread, set her elbows on her knees. She narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Work has no intrinsic value,’ she said, stabbing at the air with her cigarette. ‘Only the value you fight to give it.’

  She was imitating Neil. The two women were still giggling when Nick came back. He looked from one face to the other, gave a small, confused smile. He didn’t ask.

  Bitter, starry night, everyone in the backyard at Charles Street. Audrey was wearing a thermal shirt, striped in lairy colours, beneath her coat. Adam had already taken pictures of her in it, posing mock-sexy in her thick socks and tights in the kitchen.

  She’d gone inside to get another bottle of wine, and now she stood by the back door watching her friends. They were crowded around the fire pit in their chairs. Their skin and eyes shone in the dark; their teeth gleamed when they laughed. Yusra and Mark playing mercy, Yusra’s arm trembling with the effort; Bernie with a blanket wrapped around him like a mystic. Ben and Patrick poking at the flames, feigning indignation when Giulia said What is it with blokes and being the boss of the fire? Emy holding out her empty glass to Johnny, tilting her face, smiling like a queen. The light fell clammy and dramatic from the floodlamp. Some kid comes past the tent and goes ‘Have you guys got any nangs?’, and Johnny yells ‘Don’t put that shit in your body. Go to bed, son. Take care of yourself.’ Meredith with her American sweetness. We don’t think you’re psychic. Plastic buckets for the mussel shells, dew collecting on the streamers they’d hung along the fence.

  It was almost too good to bear, this home, these friends. Audrey was in love with them all.

  ‘They’re such good value. The other day I took a sub for Father Wallace—’ Adam was saying.

  ‘Father Wallace.’

  ‘Yes, Nicholas, turns out you get those at a private Anglican school. It’s very reverend, tra la la, anyway, I had to take the big guy’s Year 9 ethics class. So the first thing I said was Who can explain briefly to the class what euthanasia is? And this girl’s hand shoots up, and she goes, “Once I had a cold for, like, three weeks, so Mum took me to the naturopath and she said I had a really bad immune system? And she gave me these euthanasia tablets?”’

  ‘Fuck off,’ said Ben.

 
Their laughter rang out in the night. Audrey watched them. She realised she’d stopped expecting the worst, or waiting for it. The thought was a magnesium flare in her.

  Nick glanced up at her standing in the shadow. He held out his hand. She came flying across the grass to join him.

  Acknowledgments

  Much of my time editing this book was spent as a fellow at Glenfern. I’m indebted to Writers Victoria, the Readings Foundation and Glenfern’s Iola Matthews for the time and space.

  Thank you to Toni Jordan, Sam Cooney and Clare Renner, judges of the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, for shortlisting this novel, and to the Victorian State Government for their continued support of the prize. To Sam Twyford-Moore, Jen Mills, the Emerging Writers’ Festival, the Wheeler Centre and the many others who encouraged my writing.

  Heartfelt thanks, too, to Melissa Manning, Tom Minogue, Yasmine Sullivan and Kieran Stevenson for their tireless insight and encouragement, for all the late-night conversations around kitchen tables and through laptop screens. How lucky I am to workshop with people whose work I admire so. To Laura Stortenbeker, my brain-twin, for being a beautiful friend first and a sharp reader second. To Carrie Tiffany for reading first in Tuesday-night TAFE classes, and ever since; for finding the possibility in my work.

  I’m deeply grateful to everyone at Text, particularly my wonderful editor Alaina Gougoulis and Michael Heyward.

  To the gang, for so many years of love: Tasha, Kathleen, Bianca, Bridget, Clairy, Jasna and Steph.

  And to my family, especially my parents, for their good hearts.