He looked at his watch. Quarter past six. She wasn’t coming. All that anxiety about excuses had been unnecessary. He felt relief, then a pang of disappointment. There was something very appealing about her chirpy manner and bountiful breasts. But what would a woman like that see in someone like him? He was beginning to think it was a gee-up. He had learnt about no-shows when he was a teenager. The image of a lanky fifteen-year-old in board shorts waiting for a mystery girl to turn up remained in his mind even now.
He had waited an hour and a half before it registered that she wasn’t coming. Not once did he consider continuing on to the beach by himself. What was the point? Then he decided he must have misunderstood the arrangements. Perhaps it was another railway station or even a different day. There was a public phone on the station concourse, but it wouldn’t be any help because he didn’t have her number, or her name, for that matter.
It was still only one o’clock. Too early to go home – his mum would have asked questions. A beach outing involved a whole day, not just a few hours. So he spent the afternoon in the library with his beach bag tucked under the desk, reading books from the section marked 500.
When he arrived home around five, Elizabeth was in the kitchen.
‘How was the beach?’ she asked.
Kevin exploded. ‘None of your bloody business!’
His mother sent him to his room, though not before demanding that he apologise to Beth. His outbursts never lasted more than a few seconds and immediately he felt guilty. It wasn’t Beth’s fault that the meeting had gone wrong. He told her he was sorry and spent the evening in his room, cutting tide charts from the calendar and gluing them into a notebook. Tides were his newest interest. The times and heights could be predicted accurately years in advance. Apart from the occasional cyclone or flood event which altered things temporarily, you could count on the tides.
By the time Kevin was in his final year of school, he had given up on a career in meteorology and decided to become an oceanographer, specialising in tides and currents. Living beside a tidal inlet afforded him the ideal location to undertake his research. It wasn’t deep like the ocean and it didn’t have large waves or endless horizons, but it boasted something interesting. On account of the mudflats which had built up in the bay, the water retreated 50 metres twice a day. All he had to do was walk to the end of his street, climb down a track to the river’s edge and observe the ever-changing vista. Change was not something he generally liked, but the ebb and flow had a regularity to it, a pattern and predictability that was soothing.
By using the tide charts supplied by the weather bureau and adjusting the time, he was able to compile a chart for his own particular part of the river. Most afternoons after school he could be found there, observing the river and making notes. His mother knew where he was, but everyone else assumed he was in the local library. He didn’t tell them otherwise. Nor, indeed, did his mother.
One afternoon Kevin found someone else in his spot – a local fisherman who had set up a canvas chair and looked like he had settled in for a while. Before Kevin could disappear, the man said, ‘I hear this is a good spot for mulloway.’
‘I’m not much of a fisherman,’ Kevin replied.
The man glanced at the logbook under Kevin’s arm. ‘Are you an artist?’
‘No, I’m making a tide chart.’
The man seemed interested, so Kevin told him about his research. Afterwards they sat in comfortable silence while the fisherman waited in vain for the elusive mulloway to nibble at his line, and Kevin made calculations in his logbook. When the sun had almost set and only a slash of pink remained along the horizon, the fisherman packed up his gear, and Kevin tucked his book under his arm. Then both of them headed up the slope and off to their respective homes for dinner.
That evening, as the Dwyer family sat around the dinner table, Kevin quietly announced his career plans.
His sister was the first to respond: ‘So you’re going to be like Captain Nemo? I hated that book, Thirty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. We had to read it at school. Waste of time!’
‘Actually it’s twenty thousand leagues, not thirty,’ Kevin corrected, ‘with a league being approximately five and a half kilometres.’
‘I couldn’t give a damn,’ Beth retorted.
‘Mobilis in mobili,’ Kevin muttered to himself.
‘Are you swearing at me, Kevin Dwyer?’ Beth demanded.
‘Mobilis in mobili,’ he repeated. ‘That’s the Latin motto of the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s submarine. It means movement within movement.’
‘Well, whatever it means, he was crazy as a cut snake. So you’ll fit the bill perfectly.’
‘Leave your brother alone,’ said Brenda Dwyer. ‘Anyway, it’s a perfectly fine profession.’
‘But there’s no future in it, Brenda,’ said her husband. ‘Where’s the money in water ebbing and flowing? Kevin needs a job with decent prospects, something secure, like accounting.’ Michael Dwyer was an accountant. ‘People will always pay good money to have someone balance their books and minimise the amount they have to hand over to the government.’
‘It’s not very exciting, Michael. Not compared to tides and oceans and the pull of the moon.’
‘Working with numbers can bring a great deal of satisfaction.’
‘But if this tide science is what he wants to do, we shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.’
‘No wonder the boy’s such an oddball, Brenda, when you constantly encourage him in his silly ideas. The facts are simple. He’s good at maths and meticulous at record-keeping. I was even thinking of asking him to join the firm when he finishes university. Dwyer and Son.’
‘What do you think about that, Kevin?’ his mother asked.
‘The boy should feel honoured I want him to be part of the business,’ his father said.
Kevin didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent.
The next day he did something he’d never done in his life – Kevin wagged school. Dressed in his uniform, with his bag on his back, he left home at the usual time, but instead of heading for the bus stop, he turned in the opposite direction, went to the end of the street and climbed down the steep pathway to the river. On either side there were stands of banksia and eucalypts interspersed with a proliferation of blackberry and lantana. At the bottom the track opened onto a little beach only visible at low tide. Seaweed garlands lay on the sand among a detritus of plastic bottles, amber shards of glass and snack food packets. He found himself a seat on a low rock clad with a furry coating of green algae … or was it moss, or even lichen? Normally he would have made a note to himself to look up the difference in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Today he didn’t really care. Beyond the beach a broad mudflat was glistening in the sunshine. If you looked closely enough, you could see the outlines of an old oyster lease abandoned years ago.
As a small boy Kevin had tried to negotiate the mudflat at low tide, only to sink into the squelchy surface, which had sucked at him like quick sand. There was an art to walking on the mud and he didn’t possess it. Beth, on the other hand, had managed to cross to the other side as though she were weightless, barely leaving a footprint behind. ‘Stick in the mud,’ she’d called out to him from the opposite shore as he stood helplessly encased to the knees in brown muck.
For a long time Kevin watched the river birds with their stilt-like legs and webbed feet, prodding their beaks into the mud in search of food. Tiny crabs popped up momentarily and then disappeared just as quickly. A pelican swooped in, attended by a flock of ducks. They only stayed a few minutes before flying off elsewhere.
As he sat there, thinking of nothing but the river and the mudflats, Kevin realised the tide had turned and the water was creeping forward, slowly covering everything. If it had been the ocean rather than a river, the waves would have been advancing boldly towards the shore, like soldiers launching a seaborne invasion. Here it was more like a stealth attack.
By lunchtime the tide had completed its unspect
acular advance, and Kevin retreated to the low rock wall at the water’s edge to avoid getting wet. He opened his lunchbox and ate the peanut butter and lettuce sandwich his mother had packed for him, together with a piece of rainbow cake and a banana. Then he drank an entire bottle of orange cordial. Afterwards he watched the tide retreating so slowly it was hypnotic. At four-thirty the mudflats in all their vastness were visible again and he made his way up the slope to the street. When he arrived home, his mother had his afternoon tea waiting.
‘How was your day?’ she asked in the way she always did.
‘I watched the tide coming and going on the river,’ he replied.
She was silent for a moment before saying, ‘I’d better give you a note for your roll teacher tomorrow.’
The next morning, just as he was about to leave for school, she handed him an unsealed envelope. He opened it on the bus.
Dear Sir/Madam,
Please excuse Kevin’s absence yesterday. He had important business to attend to.
Yours faithfully,
Mrs B. Dwyer
Maggie
On Friday evenings Maggie had a routine. Absolutely no school work. Just open a bottle of white wine, make bruschetta and watch a movie, with Rufus asleep at her feet. She loved nothing more than to lock herself away in her little cottage. It was her refuge, her safe haven, her bolthole.
She’d bought the house during her second year of teaching, having saved the deposit from her wages. The purchase, however, had been complicated by the fact that she was a young single woman, albeit one with a secure career and a 25 per cent deposit. The bank wouldn’t give her a loan because they claimed she was likely to meet a man, have babies and default on her financial obligation. So her father offered to be guarantor on the loan and Maggie diligently made the repayments every month. On her dad’s advice, she contributed an extra amount each time. After eight years she’d paid back the entire loan, saved a fortune in interest and owned the house outright. The bank even sent her the deeds, though there was no letter of apology for doubting her ability to fulfil the commitment in the first place.
After that, she set about refurbishing her abode, removing the cheap, multi-striped carpets redolent of the 1950s to reveal the original wide floorboards beneath, repairing leadlight panels in the casement windows, reinstalling Edwardian fireplaces which had been ripped out by earlier owners, and replacing modern bathroom fittings with reproduction Federation versions. On the outside, there was less to do. The tuck-pointed brickwork was still in good condition; the terra cotta roof tiles were as good as new, apart from a dusting of lichen on the south-facing side; and the elegant tessellated tiles on the verandah were mostly intact. The verandah itself, however, lacked its original fretwork trim, a flaw made glaringly obvious by the fact that the neighbouring cottages still had theirs. So she asked a local joiner to copy the design and reinstate the fretwork in all its glory.
Once the big jobs were done, she enlisted her friend Doug, the art teacher at school, to help decorate the interior. Maggie had always preferred neutral tones – conservative beiges and creams.
‘Beige is sooo boring, darling,’ Doug told her. ‘Why don’t we try something exciting like yellow and purple?’
‘Purple!’ she exclaimed, remembering the mauve dress she’d worn to Josh’s wedding. She had avoided that colour ever since.
Doug produced a colour wheel to prove his point. ‘They’re direct opposites but they team up surprisingly well. Picture sunflowers and irises.’
‘I suppose that doesn’t sound too bad,’ she conceded. ‘But I don’t want it looking like one of those garish places from a TV makeover show.’
Finally, she gave in and let him use his colour scheme in the open-plan kitchen, dining area and sunroom. To her relief he chose white for the ceilings and woodwork. The yellow turned out to be a soft buttery hue that made the walls glow. As for the purple, there weren’t large areas of it, just purple-and-white striped curtains. The result was smart rather than gaudy. Then, like a decorator on a TV show, he produced accessories and cushions in both hues and arranged them artistically on the various surfaces. Maggie had to admit it looked picture perfect, and the overall effect was still there, even now.
As she lounged on the sofa, Maggie sipped her wine and stroked Rufus’s back with her bare foot. Her laptop was sitting innocently on the coffee table, within arm’s reach. Idly she typed Josh’s URL into the address bar and clicked. There he was again, with his unchanged face and grey beard, smiling at her from the screen. She went to the ‘Seminars’ page, only to peruse the booking form, not to actually complete it.
Even if she typed in her details, it would only become serious when she pushed the ‘Submit’ button. Under ‘Name’ she put M. Taylor. That was anonymous enough. She didn’t fill in the sections marked ‘Birth date’ and ‘Address’, but she keyed in her mobile number and a preferred date. Then she thought, what the hell? It wouldn’t hurt to go along and hear him. She might even learn something she could use with her students.
At the end of that fateful in-service day, Maggie met Josh for drinks at Noonan’s. Within a week he had moved from his sleazy flat above a shop in inner-city Brickton to her airy Federation house in Harksfield. They hadn’t been living there long when Josh applied for an associate professor’s job at a regional university. After the interview he was beset by doubts, but Maggie assured him he would be successful. After all, Josh Houghton led a charmed life and things came easily to him. When the position was confirmed, Maggie contacted the Education Department about a transfer to Glenview, but there wasn’t a high school in the district offering French, let alone Latin. The education bureaucrats asked if she could teach Japanese. ‘No,’ she told them, ‘I don’t know any Japanese.’ ‘Well, couldn’t you learn it?’ was the response. ‘Could you?’ she replied. So she gave her notice, dealt with her super contributions and put the house in the hands of a real estate agent – not for sale, just for rent.
They took Maggie’s furniture with them, as well as Josh’s meagre belongings – his clothing, books, records and CDs. As Maggie had expected, he fitted into the rural setting as if he’d always lived there. Meanwhile she looked around for a job. Teaching was out of the question, unless she was prepared to be a casual, minding other people’s classes. One day she was walking down Glenview’s main street, when she saw a sign in the window of a dress shop: ‘Manager required’. If she could manage a classroom of thirty rowdy adolescents, then she could run a dress shop. She went straight inside and spoke with the middle-aged woman behind the counter. It turned out she was the owner and wanted to hand over the day-to-day responsibilities to someone else.
Maggie wasn’t impressed with the clothes – matronly florals and pastel suits. The window displays were even worse, containing old-fashioned plaster mannequins with chipped fingers, double-jointed limbs and lopsided wigs. But at least this was something to keep her busy, instead of sitting at home, watching morning talk shows and afternoon soap operas. Taken with Maggie’s breezy manner and smart black city pants suit, the owner offered her a six-week trial.
By the end of that time Maggie had added new stock to attract the uni crowd, plus snazzy accessories like jewellery and scarves. At the twelve-month mark, the shop’s façade had been transformed by the addition of a striped awning and window displays that changed twice a week. Better still, the turnover had doubled.
Meanwhile Maggie and Josh were renting a 1960s textured brick house not far from the Glenview campus. It was the blandest place she had ever seen, and not even her lovely furniture could make it look any better. She missed her Federation home with its leadlight windows and terrazzo-tiled verandah. She longed for the high ceilings, decorative plasterwork and picture rails. She never complained, though. After all, she was living with the man she loved.
They made many friends among Josh’s colleagues at the university. Nobody knew that the young woman who ran Nola’s Boutique had ever done anything else but sell clothes. They had
no idea she spoke fluent French and possessed an Honours degree in Latin. She was just Josh’s partner, the one who always dressed well because she ran a dress shop. But Maggie didn’t mind. Well, not much. The professor in charge of Josh’s department sometimes treated her like a dumb brunette, but she responded with grace and humour. It wouldn’t do to ruin Josh’s career path by making a rude comment to his boss, even if he did deserve it.
When the professor retired, there were several candidates for the job, but the outcome was never in doubt, at least in Maggie’s opinion. Josh was born to rule. A benevolent dictator, so charming he could win the allegiance of his underlings and rivals alike. In their second year of living in the country, he became the youngest professor at the university and Maggie turned thirty-two. In her dreams it had always been the age she wanted to start a family. When she broached the subject with Josh, he said he wasn’t ready. So she let it lie, smouldering inside her like a peat fire.
In the meantime, she was the perfect homemaker, creating a cosy hideaway from a boring brick house and entertaining his friends and their spouses with three-course dinners she whipped up after a hard day working in the shop. At night, even though she was often so tired she just wanted to fall asleep, she played concubine to her prince, satisfying his every need.
Sometimes her life seemed like a dream. Who would have thought mousy Maggie Taylor would end up living with Josh Houghton – the smartest, funniest, most handsome man she had ever met? If he never mentioned the word ‘marriage’, she could accept that, just to be with him. And so their lives continued until the day Maggie celebrated her thirty-eighth birthday. She had given up raising the subject of babies, and she had accepted that he didn’t want to get married. He said he’d done it once and that was enough. Anyway, he always added, how could they improve on what they had?
On the morning of her birthday Maggie made a spontaneous decision. She stopped taking her contraceptive pills. Over the next few months she avoided thinking about the consequences of her daring decision – Maggie found it easy to block out things she didn’t want to reflect upon. But months went by and there was no baby. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to be a mother. Perhaps it was for the best. After a while she forgot about getting pregnant.
The Trivia Man Page 6