by Chris Else
Lisa was alert to this. She felt an expectation, waiting for the next absurdity. To judge? Or just to laugh?
‘Law and Order,’ Colin said.
‘Ah!’ Larry turning to him. ‘Lawn Order? Keep off the grass?’
‘Exactly, mate. This is the trouble with the modern world.’ Colin rising to it, as he always did. ‘We spend millions on a police force but instead of doing what they’re meant to do, instead of keeping our lawns tidy, they’re chasing criminals and dishing out speeding tickets. Speeding tickets, I ask you. Anyone would think a bloke didn’t have the right to kill himself if he wanted to.’
The scream of an ambulance. The thought of it appalled her. Insensitive prick! Lisa looked across at Tom, but he didn’t seem to care. Maybe he wasn’t listening.
‘Anyway,’ Ward said loudly, grabbing the attention. ‘Isn’t it all supposed to be the end of the world? Didn’t Quo Vadis say so?’
‘Quo Vadis?’ Sylvia asked.
‘The one who made all the predictions,’ Ward looking puzzled.
‘You mean Nostradamus. Quo Vadis means “where are you going?” in Latin.’
‘Well, that’s right,’ Ward said, looking confused.
‘Ah, my friend!’ Larry laughing. ‘My pet, my monster. My dear old ignoramus. Ignoramus ponderosimi. I drink to you!’
And poor old Ward just sat there, grinning like a loon.
9.
THE NIGHT AIR WAS COLD, the sky clear. Maddy slipped her hand under Ward’s arm, his good arm. He crooked it, giving her somewhere to rest her wrist as they walked. She liked it, that feeling of solidity, something to lean on that would not give way. She liked that he was big. Sometimes she worried that he carried too much weight, that he might have a heart attack at the office or the club, but these were momentary fears. For the most part, she had the same easy confidence in him that she had in herself. They had a good life, the kind of life she had always wanted, although she had never known she wanted it until she had it. Even now, perhaps, it was not exactly knowing. It was more that she didn’t question any of it, didn’t stop to wish or speculate that it might have been different. Other people tied themselves in knots over things like that — Sylvia, for example, and Lisa, too. Maddy could never understand it, although she cared too much for either of them to be critical.
The street was empty. Noise of their two pairs of heels along the pavement. Pale pools of light from the street lamps merging, dark shadows among the trees in the gardens. Yellow. Everywhere the light fell was a pale, dim yellow. Dirty yellow. A mucked-up colour.
‘Is Lisa doing the story?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
‘The Progressives will want to take the credit.’
‘Well, don’t let them.’ She gave his arm a little shake. It annoyed her when he wasn’t given his due. Of course, some of that was his own fault.
‘Larry was in good form,’ Ward said.
‘Yes. Although I think he’s a bit down. You know. I think that’s why Sylvia asked us all over.’
‘Why’s he down?’
‘Don’t know.’ Although the thought that came to mind was Polly Drafton, beaten by her husband till her bones cracked.
‘Do you …’ He paused, looking for the right words. ‘What do you think Larry thinks of me?’
‘You’re his friend. You’re his best friend. You and Colin.’
‘Sometimes, you know, he says things. They hurt a bit.’
‘Oh, Pookey, I know.’ She squeezed his arm, for comfort.
‘I’m not that stupid,’ he said.
‘You’re not stupid at all!’ She stopped suddenly and his momentum tugged at her, pulling her up on to her toes, swinging her around so they were facing one another. She reached out for him and hugged him, pressed herself against the mass of him, which seemed bigger than ever with the padding of his coat. She felt his hesitation for a moment as he wondered, as she did, whether anyone could see them, and then he was wrapping her up in his arms and holding her. She lifted her face and she closed her eyes, waited, and then the familiar brush of his moustache descended. It was damp and cold from the night air but then his lips came quickly after, warm and wine-tasting, and she felt the wanting inside her, deep down.
‘He doesn’t mean it,’ she said, when her mouth was free again.
‘I know.’
‘He’s got a hard streak, that’s all. It’s his background.’
‘Background?’
‘The way he was treated when he was little.’
‘He doesn’t remember when he was little.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ she said. ‘It would have to be really tough to force you to forget it.’
It was impossible to imagine where Larry came from. It was so different from what she had known herself, what any of the rest of them had known. Larry was reinvented. No sign left of the child he had been. No sign of the accent even.
‘It’s their wedding anniversary next week,’ she said.
‘Who? Larry and Syl’s?’
‘Yes, their twentieth. Next Friday.’
‘Really? We should celebrate.’
‘Yes.’
‘We should put on a dinner for them, for the whole Tribe. At The Little Frog.’
‘Yes.’ A rush of feeling, love and gratitude and respect for his generosity, his great good-heartedness. ‘You’re wonderful,’ she said.
‘Oh, Poppet. Thank you. You’re all I’ve got. You and the boys.’
For a moment she thought he was going to cry, which would have been a very strange thing for him to do.
The hill in Castor Road swept down to the traffic lights at the end of High Street. Amber. Colin planted his foot, felt the power, the smooth surge of the V6. The pull of the curve towards Victory Bridge.
‘The light was red,’ Heidi said, beside him.
‘’Twas yellow.’
‘It was red when you go through.’
That prim tone, always right, made him cringe a little.
‘Hey, lighten up,’ he said. ‘It’s after midnight.’
‘And people are bad drivers after midnight. And you would fail the breathalyser, I think.’
‘Takes more than a few wines to make me a bad driver.’ Glancing at her, sitting with her head back against the rest, her face pale, calm, staring ahead. Relaxed, unruffled. Not bothered at all, was she? So why was she nagging if it didn’t bother her?
Over the bridge and into the dark. The full-beam headlights splayed along the hedgerow on the left, the grass verge, the power poles, flick and flick and flick and flick, as the Jag slid down the booze-smooth tunnel.
‘About some things I am more seriously than you,’ she said.
‘Serious.’ He couldn’t resist correcting her. ‘“I am more serious.”’
‘Don’t pick my words. I mean there are things you do. Like driving too fast.’
He didn’t answer. Didn’t slow down, though, either. Damned if he’d slow down just because she said so. Keep the mood, the happy mood. But it was already slipping away.
‘Like sexist jokes,’ she continued.
‘I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy your evening,’ he said, articulating carefully with just a soupçon of sarcasm. Un petit peu.
‘Oh, I enjoyed. They’re my friends. Nice people. I think you were not nice, though.’
‘Get over it. It was a joke.’
‘No, I don’t mean the silly joke. I mean …’ A lift of her hand, a gesture, caught it in his side vision. ‘You drive too fast. You say it doesn’t matter. You make jokes about the cops give speeding tickets. But they are chasing people who drive too fast, people like you. And it is somebody like you who killed Tom’s daughter.’
‘I did not kill Tom’s daughter!’ The bark of rage was a shock, like a blow to the head. Good God, where did it come from? Slow down! But he didn’t want to. Couldn’t. Not now. ‘Anyway.’ Fighting for control. ‘How come you’re so friendly with Tom, all of a sudden?’
&
nbsp; She shrugged. ‘We talk.’
‘For half the evening.’ They’d been very intimate, too. Little clinks of the wine glass? ‘Don’t you have any consideration for my feelings?’ What feelings? What were his feelings exactly?
‘We talk business.’
The corner coming up. He braked, felt the loss of power. Turned the wheel and the car swung smoothly into Cox’s Line. The long stretch home towards the hills. He put his foot down. Ran for it.
‘I can’t help you,’ she said. The same calm tone.
What was she talking about? ‘I don’t need help.’ He needed consideration and loyalty. Just a little bit of loyalty.
‘No, I mean I can’t help when you are jealous,’ she went on. ‘Whatever I do, if ever I talk to a man, or even a boy who does not yet shave or even maybe a woman who is not entirely ugly, you are jealous. So, either I live only talking to the plants or I don’t care.’
‘You don’t care? Well, fine. That’s fine by me. You’re a free agent. Have it off with whoever you like.’ As long as it’s not Tom Marino.
‘Maybe if we do more I would not need.’
What? What was that supposed to mean? ‘Are you complaining about my sexual performance?’
‘Complain? Oh, no. I am a grateful person.’
‘What the fuck’s going on, then?’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Linguistic poverty. I understand it now.’
Larry sat sprawled in the chair, the glass still in his hand nearly slopping. Head back. Sylvia thought he had passed out or gone to sleep, but when her shadow fell across him his eyes opened.
‘You okay?’ she asked.
‘They all gone?’
‘Yes.’
He sat up, swayed, sighed with a lip-trembling splutter, lifted the glass, guzzled at it.
‘Wonderful evening, was it?’ he asked.
‘What do you think?’
‘Wonderful evening, wonderful, wonderful.’ He sounded vague, empty. Drunk, of course. But he had many forms of drunk. He was drunk more ways than he was sober.
She touched him on the shoulder and he lifted his eyes, familiar eyes with that self-ironic twinkle — except this time there was something else, something behind them that frightened her. She sat down on the sofa nearest him, leaned forward, elbows on her knees.
‘I haven’t asked you how today went,’ she said.
‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘Good. Jackson’s still trotting out the Holy Riverites. We must have done half the bloody congregation by now. Clones for Jesus. The men in their Hallenstein suits. The women in cotton frocks and cardies buttoned up to the neck, with those triangle scarves on their heads. And they all say the same thing.’ His voice shifted into a quoting tone. ‘Pastor David Drafton was a good man, a tower of moral strength to his flock. Could he have beaten his wife, then? Could he have raped her? No, no, no. Impossible.’
‘How do you deal with them?’
‘Oh, the jury doesn’t have much sympathy. Bible-bangers like that are too weird. All you have to do is let them say what they believe. Polly’s evil because the pastor said so. She has a falling sickness because the pastor said so, and the sickness accounted for her bruises. How else would she have got bruises like that?’ He shrugged. ‘No sensible person’s going to believe them ahead of the medical evidence.’
‘How’s Polly holding up?’
‘She just sits there. You’ve seen her on TV. Head bowed, dressed like them, the way that scarf makes her ears stick out. I was talking to her today. I was asking her why, why he called her a whore. It was a whore of the spirit, she says, not the flesh. Did he really stand her up in front of the congregation and call her that? Yes, she says. So did she think she was a scapegoat? Ah! And suddenly she comes alive. She looks at me and she smiles. God, you should have seen it. A slow lifting of her face except that the left side doesn’t move as far as the right so that her expression twists into a travesty. The eyes and mouth of a pretty young woman, a simple girl, but here —’ his hand lifted to his left cheek and jabbed there with open fingers — ‘here the nerves are broken and the muscles are half dead and so her face is full of pain, a leering pain. It would’ve frightened kids. It would’ve set dogs barking.’
The words, the images they conjured, made her feel ill, as if that world, with its secret savagery, had suddenly become real to her. Human beings did this to each other. Creatures like herself, like Larry. She felt implicated somehow.
‘How can you stand it?’ she said.
He looked at her, a weary look, and then he gave a puff of a sigh. ‘Don’t know, to be honest.’
And she heard, in that helpless tone, the reason that he so often made mock of it, treated it like a game.
‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I can’t win this one. The best I can do is get the poor bitch three years instead of fifteen.’
‘That’s better than nothing.’
‘It’s weird,’ he said. ‘She makes me think of my mother.’
How could that be? He always said he never knew his mother.
‘You remember something?’
‘No. No, no, no. It makes no sense at all.’
10.
FRESH. THE BLUE SKY. The lawn still white with dew. Colin stood on the terrace, the coffee cup in his right hand, saucer in his left, looking out over the garden and the paddocks beyond towards the hills in the distance, the band of mist and then the darker blue-grey peaks above. Every day this view was different, depending on the time he got up, the sunrise, the cloud cover, the moisture in the air. Every day had its own mood, its own colour. What’s today, then, Colly? Is it a blue day? Is it a black day, darling? No, no. Today’s not black, Mum. Today is a YELLOW! day. A big, fat smiling YELLOW!!! day. Now how did we manage that? Hard to say, given the general situation, but don’t knock it. Just enjoy. On a yellow day, there’s a special little ritual. We open the French doors and we step out here with bated breath, keep our eyes lowered until we’re in position, feet apart, cup and saucer hoisted to the chest, and then lift — the cup and the gaze at the same moment. Sip and look. The coffee and the view.
Heidi made good coffee and today the fact of her making it was a good sign, an extra bit of yellow, because he could take it to mean that she forgave him, that last night’s snapping didn’t matter. The coffee and the view were proof against doubt and disapproval. Because a man can do anything on a yellow day. He can stand his ground and fight the fight. He can win the treasure and the princess. He can conquer the world — was doing so, in fact, as the view attested. Because a good chunk of what was spread out there was owned by guess who? That’s right. Yours Truly, Colin Wyte. Gent. No, not ‘gent’, not precisely, because a gent didn’t work and he’d worked bloody hard to get what he had. Ten and a half hectares, most of which was making money, leased to a dairy farmer further north. Mustn’t brag, though. Why not? People don’t like braggers, Colly. Oh, come on, now, who’s to know? Isn’t a chap entitled to a little brag, a teensy-weensy brag, as long as he does it in the privacy of his own home, contemplating his own view? Because the view was like a mirror, like a plate-glass window in which your shadow floated. It was like the look in the eyes of guests at a social function when you arrived with Heidi on your arm.
So enjoy the yellow while you can because it never lasts. It gets taken away and dealt with. The world is black and the joy of yellow is a fleeting thing, like the pulse of an orgasm in the dreary dark, and after it the suck of emptiness that drags you down, drown. Silver bubbles rising, blip, blip, blip. Quiet, now, Colly. Your father can’t concentrate if you make a noise. He can’t concentrate on what he’s doing, doing nothing, staring at the newspaper. Why doesn’t he turn the pages? Shush, Colly. Shush now. The memory tripped a need to act, an impulse not to duty and obedience but to love, a spasm of responsibility.
He drained the last of the coffee and, with a half-turn, bending at the knees, placed the cup and saucer on the small wrought-iron table to his left. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket for his
phone, flipped it open. Speed dial 22. He lifted his eyes back to the hills as it rang.
‘Hello?’ Imogen’s voice, light and rising. A little roundness to the O, as if in special emphasis.
‘Hello, darling.’
‘Hi, Daddy.’ A fall in tone. Disappointed? Hoping for someone else? A friend? A boyfriend, maybe?
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Hanging around. Waiting for my ride.’
‘You’re early, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve got music practice.’
‘Well, I just called to ask you what you want for your birthday.’
‘A horse,’ she said. She didn’t even have to think about it.
‘A horse?’
‘Yes.’ The lightness back again, a breathlessness like the gasp of cold in a mountain lake. He could hear the unspoken plea floating there. He waited for it to rise to the surface. ‘Please, Dad. Would that be possible?’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’ What would Lisa think?
‘Just say it would be possible. Pleeeeeease. I’ll love you for ever.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Great!’ She took his answer for a yes, of course. Did he want that? ‘Oops,’ she said suddenly. ‘I gotta go now. Seeya.’
He had meant to offer her a lift. Who was taking her to school this early? Tom? The thought was grit in a wound. He stole my wife. He’s stealing my daughter. No. That was dumb. That was not a productive thought.
Colin closed the phone, slipped it back into his pocket, took a deep breath, looked once more at the distant hills. Feel the power, feel the clarity, he told himself. Because it was obvious. There was one thing Tom and Lisa couldn’t do. They could not give Imogen a horse. They couldn’t afford it. So who had she asked? Her Daddy. So, why not? She was his girl, his baby, and she should have what she wanted. Especially on a yellow day. A little growl of satisfaction lifted in him.
‘What d’you reckon?’ Stevie looked up from the monitor to Dart, the editor, who was hovering at his shoulder. Dart bent forward and peered at the front-page layout. The photo of the roadside with the cross and the garland, the flowers caught in a little lift of wind, forlorn-looking. Lisa had almost cried when she first saw the picture.