He fell in love with a thin, efficient, quick-moving girl whose eyes stabbed here and there in sharp, cynical amusement. Her name was Jean Shrub and I gathered the impression she had no intention of falling in love with Paul or with anyone else until, after sensible consideration, she regarded marriage as the next logical step in her career.
She worked in a large departmental store and was being trained to take over the management of the cosmetics section. She often went out with men, making no attempt to hide this fact in the interests of Paul’s peace of mind. It was part of her life. It meant nothing. Paul was one of her friends, nothing more.
It was an arrangement that tortured him, drove him to my room with greater frequency since here he could unburden himself. Reasoning under the constant irritation of jealousy he could turn a casual remark of hers into a sinister revelation, looking to me to reveal its falsity.
‘I caught her out the other night,’ he told me. ‘She didn’t know which way to look. We were talking at the gate after coming out of the pictures and she went into a dance. You know the way she does. We were two ballet dancers leaping about. She nearly kicked me on the chin with a high kick and then she said, “Do you remember the night you kissed me on the leg?” ’
‘Well, that was a good sign,’ I observed. ‘She remembered it with pleasure, you see.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Paul leaning towards me—he was sitting on the edge of my bed—‘but I’ve never kissed her on the leg. She forgot, see. Some other bloke’s kissed her lég.’
‘Hell!’ I muttered, feeling sorry for her.
‘Didn’t she put herself away?’ Paul went on triumphantly. ‘It shook me up, I can tell you. I couldn’t think properly for a minute and my stomach was twitching inside.’
‘Well, say some chap did kiss her leg,’ I argued. ‘Does it matter much?’
‘It matters a lot. A fellow that kisses her on the leg must be in love with her. She might love him for all I know. I’ll bet she does love him. And another thing: How did he kiss her on the leg? Hell! you’d have to be upside-bloody-down to kiss her on the leg. He must have been shot. She must have been drunk herself yet she reckons she doesn’t drink. Aw-r-r, they’re all the same, these girls. You can’t believe a word they say after they tell you they’re sorry they’re late. Here she’s going round to booze-up parties with these acrobatic bastards and she’ll never go further than a kiss with me.’
Jean could talk interestingly. She could tell a story. It was this capacity to express herself that attracted Paul.
‘What I like about her is that she can talk. You don’t have to be always kissing her. You can sit back and talk about different things and she can make you laugh and feel good. After you leave her you keep thinking of all she said, not of how she kisses or that. Well, you think of that too,’ he added. ‘You get into bed and go over it all again. I tell you I wouldn’t give tuppence to go out with another girl. She’s the only girl I ever want to go out with.’
But he went out with other girls during those periods when she showed no interest in meeting him. These arid spaces in his week-to-week existence were introduced by some disagreement, some imagined slight. There was an evening when he came to my room resolved to forget her.
‘We didn’t go to the pictures the other night. We sat in her room. We had a big fire and we sat in front of it on the couch. There was a big marble mantelpiece with a mirror above it. You know the sort. We just sat there and I had my arm around her and I kept thinking about how I loved her and how we are always laughing when we go out together. I felt sort of full up with love for her. You know … You want to tell her but you don’t know how to put it.
‘I wanted to make a speech. Aw—well, not a speech but I wanted to say something about how lucky I was to be going round with her and of how I thought of her all day at work and things like that. Like you when you get going. She stood up with her elbow on the mantelpiece and I took hold of her hand that was hanging down and I bent over it and held it against my face.
‘It sounds bloody silly now but it wasn’t then. Anyway I started to tell her and I was shaking, I tell you. It was all sort of mixed up, what I said, but by hell I meant it. I was nearly howling.
‘When I finished I looked up at her and I thought—you know how it is—I thought she would have tears in her eyes and I thought she would bend down and wrap her arms round me and we’d hang on to each other. But she was looking at herself in the mirror, smiling and patting her hair. It was just as if you’d thrown a bucket of cold water over me.’
He sought explanations of her disdain, believing that if other men had similar problems with the girls they loved, the treatment he was receiving from Jean was normal.
‘Do you reckon it’s true that the course of true love never runs smoothly?’ he once asked me.
I thought of this remark after Mr Shrink had startled me with his statement that my crutches were a surety I would never marry. It was not love that both he and Paul were regarding with lack of comprehension; it was life.
I left Mr Shrink in the kitchen cleaning saucepans and went to my room. It was a narrow cell containing a single bed, a chest-of-drawers and a wardrobe. A long mat edged with tattered lace covered the top of the chest-of-drawers. It was an untidy covering that never stayed straight but slipped into creases at the lifting of a hairbrush or the placing of a book upon it.
I was sometimes tempted to crumple it up in my hands and throw it away an immense distance. Mr Shrink straightened it each morning then stood back and looked at it with his head on one side.
I sat on the edge of my bed, the only seat in the room, and thus confronted the chest-of-drawers mirror not four feet away.
This window into a tilted room in which sorrow seemed to reside was flanked by four tiny drawers containing cuttings from papers and notes I had written. The duplication beyond the glass of a bottle of hair lotion, a brush, an ash tray with the words ‘Hotel Federal’ embossed upon it and two library books emphasised a poverty of possessions the room had accepted unquestioningly.
Imprisoned by its bare walls, preserved for presentation to each new occupier, was the atmosphere each had experienced and accepted. To transform the room with books and pictures needed money and a questing mind and there was no evidence that either had ever been available for its need.
It was depressing to sit there while waiting for Paul. It was eight o’clock and outside the night was inviting. I decided to wait on the street where I could stand saturated by the life of others, by the richness of the dark, enfolding houses of people.
I enjoyed such moments of comprehension and love when the mind was attuned to every sound, to every movement that suggested life. It was then I rose above pettiness and greed and became a giant with tender hands that reached out in communion above every home.
I stepped out of the door that led to the driveway and walked out on to the street. I leant against the fence beside the gate and looked down towards Sydney Road where the lights illuminated the passing trams and from where Paul would come striding.
The lights in Imperial Street only emphasised the darkness of its alleys and verandas. It was a street tired after the day’s trials—no voices, no children playing. Even the dog that limped its way into the shadow of an alley was anticipating sleep.
A man on crutches came swinging down from Sydney Road. I watched him with interest, a professional interest. The manner in which a handicapped man uses his crutches not only reveals whether he is experienced in their use or not but something of his character. A man may walk on crutches for a lifetime and never overcome his initial timidity, his fear of falls. He may be a man who takes risks in their manipulation or be a victim of habit and never alter his style from the time he first ventured forth upon them.
Some ignore the importance of balance and weight in the crutches they use, regarding crutches as necessary adjuncts to walking but unworthy of scientific appraisal as instruments for a complicated purpose. Those who put all their w
eight upon their hands will defend this method against those who believe it best to be supported from the shoulders; those who bound freely will claim it is less tiring than those who advance in short leaps.
The man walking towards me was carrying a large parcel in his right hand. I gathered the impression it was heavy but if this was so it did not affect the evenness of his swing. Experience had taught him how to move both arms with unity even though one was burdened and the other free.
He walked with an alternation of relaxation and effort, his muscles at rest when he swung through the air, tensed when he lifted himself to the leap, the method of walking that conserves strength. I waited for him to cross the intersection of an alley and the street where the cobblestones, ringed with the greasy water from a drain, had to be negotiated with skill if a slip was to be avoided. Only two of the stones had a dry surface where they bulged above the dampness and it was upon these stones the crutch tips had to be placed to ensure a safe grip.
I knew them well. Their position did not form a line at right angles to the street and crutches resting upon them were at an angle to one’s progress. The leap between them was thus an awkward one with a twist of the body at its summit and a landing that involved whipping the rear crutch back to position while balancing on inadequate legs.
He did not pause to examine the crossing as I thought he would. He selected the right stones mechanically, leaped and continued, his mind probably on other things.
When he was a few yards away from me I said, ‘You know that slippery bit back there, do you?’
He looked surprised.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going down to the station. I don’t live here.’
‘You picked the only two stones that are any good,’ I said. ‘I thought you must have been along here before.’
He gestured the unimportance of this conclusion. He was short with powerful shoulders and had a round untroubled face. Beneath the straight creased legs of his trousers one sensed the presence of withered limbs.
He leant against the fence beside me, shifting his parcel to his left hand and raising his right arm up and down till the blood flowed freely again.
‘No, I hardly noticed it. I just went over. You know instinctively where you’ll slip and where you won’t. You learn that at the start.’ He smiled and glanced at my legs. ‘You should know that.’
‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ I said, ‘but sometimes you like to think you’re smarter than the other fellow.’
‘They all know,’ he said. ‘Where would you be if you didn’t?—Flat on your back.’
‘They know through experience,’ I claimed. ‘There’s nothing instinctive about it.’ I had been looking at his parcel. ‘What is the weight of the parcel?’ I asked.
He handed it to me and I held it against one of my crutches for a moment before handing it back to him.
‘I wouldn’t like to carry that far,’ I said. ‘It’s heavy. Do you always use your right arm?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I try and vary it,’ I said, ‘but I’m no good with my left. I swing it lower and lower then trip myself up.’
‘I had a bad buster yesterday.’ He proffered the information with no desire to gain sympathy. Falls were part of our lives and were viewed dispassionately. But they were always interesting.
‘What happened?’
‘I was in Bourke Street about five—you know the crowd. It seemed full of women that close in on you. I was swinging in towards my legs to miss them. Then a woman hooked my crutch with her foot and went staggering forward and I came down. It would have been all right if I could have flung myself to land on my hands but I sort of ricocheted off some fat chap in front and I landed sideways on my ear. They were stepping over me in all directions. Look!’
He held his head towards me and I looked at his ear which was abraded and swollen. I smiled as I looked at it and noting my reaction he smiled too.
I placed my hand on his shoulder, eager to continue these accounts of falls that always seemed to me fraught with humour but which were never regarded as such by my friends.
We were thus engaged when Paul appeared. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked anxiously, seeing my outstretched arm as a link offering comfort.
‘We have been discussing our busters,’ I explained.
Paul gave a weak laugh and looked embarrassed.
‘I’ll leave you to cheer up your mate,’ said the man. ‘Hurroo.’ He swung away towards the station.
3
Paul and I walked down to Sydney Road to catch a tram to the city. We were going to the Ambassador Cafe, a meeting place for youth from homes that had failed to supply their children with purpose, from homes where the moulding processes adopted by parents conflicted with the son or daughter’s yearning for self-expression.
The girls there found escape in the company of boys; the boys sought recognition of their imagined maturity in the admiration of girls. They were still children to their parents; here they were men and women to each other.
I did not like going there for I sensed that it set a pattern for living that could direct me throughout my life. The trade in emotions I witnessed there was a trade that thrived on loneliness, on a need for direction. Some called it love but I saw it as the grasping of a drifting plank in their uncharted sea.
Chance meetings with girls conditioned to regard escape as a purpose, as a goal, were not associations that would supply me with what I needed.
Nevertheless this cafe period was a stage, a necessary one, in my search for the complete confidence that walking on crutches was holding back.
I disliked the place for another reason. The task I had set myself was not only painful to me but objectionable. It took from me my dignity, my pride. It left me open to disdain, scorn, the humiliation of being patronised.
I feared girls, feared the power they had to hurt me, to destroy my hopes of becoming a writer, since I realised that the man from whom the faces of girls were forever turned could never picture life with truth.
When Paul and I visited this cafe it was our custom to sit drinking coffee until two girls sat down at some near-by table. If they appeared attractive to Paul he would say, ‘Let’s go over and sit with them.’
At these words every atom of my being shouted a protest. There was the rising, the walking over, my incoherence when confronted with them. Every journey to such a table was made with painful reluctance.
Paul was never worried over conversation. He could launch into flattering chatter without faltering, without strain. He told me once, when I expressed my inability to talk to girls, that he knew a fellow who when he danced with a strange girl, always said, ‘I like your frock.’
‘I don’t think he ever said anything else,’ Paul said, ‘but all the girls he met liked him.’
I sometimes thought of this fellow but always with contempt. The girls who found his company enjoyable must have been denied all opportunities for development.
It seemed to me that the attraction of a girl was in proportion to her ability to communicate or to listen with interest to conversation not intended to flatter. She only became attractive physically when she had gained your admiration through qualities of mind that met a need in you.
There were no qualities of mind that appealed to me in the girls I was meeting. But the lovely qualities must have been there hidden, submerged, waiting the release that society had witheld from them—example, promise, and education that did not confine its recipient forever in one of the long corridors of class but opened up the beauty of the world to all.
I began to realise that these girls did not always show a preference for the boys they liked but to those whose attendance on them would rouse the envy of their girl-friends. Their relationship with other girls was competitive and they valued boys according to their looks, knowing the company of a good-looking boy added to their prestige.
‘I know I’ll marry a handsome fellow as dumb as they come just to triumph over two or t
hree girls I know,’ a girl told me, feeling a need to confide. ‘I’ll be unhappy but I can’t help it. I want them to know I can get any boy.’
Competition and jealousy were always ingredients in the friendships between the girls that came in twos or threes to sit at the cafe tables.
Paul and I once took two nurses home to the suburban hospital in which they worked. They demonstrated their friendship to each other by ostentatious displays of affection, hanging on to each other’s arm, relating stories of mutual experiences in which loyalty to each other and a resolve not to be parted had foiled the aims of men we understood were like us.
I imagined this display was merely a warning they would stick together and I received it with pleasure since I felt incapable of interesting the girl I was with. But at the hospital gates Paul found no trouble in disappearing to the rear of the hospital with his companion while I was left with mine, standing in the garden.
She reached over and began fixing my tie and at this invitation I kissed her. She must have realised my amateur status since she drew back and exclaimed thoughtfully, ‘Good heavens!’
I stayed with her about half an hour waiting for Paul, then began to worry over catching the last tram home.
‘I must go,’ I said to her. ‘If you see Paul, tell him I’ve gone.’
‘Don’t go yet,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t want to go in first. To be first in makes it look as if the man didn’t think much of you. If Rene goes in first and I come in after, I’ll be able to crow over her. She’s always trying to be last in and when she is she keeps throwing it up at me.’
I stayed on till Paul appeared.
‘I thought you would’ve gone!’ he exclaimed.
‘I bet Rene did too,’ said my companion with smug satisfaction. ‘She’s gone in, has she?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul.
Paul found great satisfaction in the company of girls who were desirable to other men and though I understood quite well the reason for these preferences, I would not have admired him so much were it the only standard he held to guide his opinion of them.
In Mine Own Heart Page 3