She lies in bed. She can arouse herself very well. Like adultery, something that she’s not made a habit of. She takes to sleeping naked, which she hasn’t done for years. When you sleep in a house with small children and sick people you have to be ready to jump out of bed and get to them before you wake up properly, you don’t want to take time covering your nakedness. She puts linen sheets on the bed, has a shower, rubs into her skin a fine white lotion scented with Arpège and called lait délicieux, delicious milk. When she stretches in bed, luxuriating in the cool silky smooth sheets, turning over on her stomach in simple-minded delight, she gives herself an orgasm; the linen against her nipples has set her off. She’s impressed with herself. She smiles and feels her face smooth itself into an expression of delight, knowing, innocent, inward. The lineaments of gratified desire. Blake’s words slide through her head:
In a wife I do desire
What in whores is often found
The lineaments of gratified desire
She loves the weightiness of lineaments and gratified, the small cool words, wife, and whore. And desire twice.
To be prized in wife and whore. And in oneself. This is another story to tell herself. The free and independent woman who pleasures herself. No need for adultery. For a man. Or a woman. Though that is also a thought. She knows a lot more interesting unattached women than she does men.
So she lies in her bed, stroking her breasts. This is the present moment, it is good. Like looking up from her desk at one of Canberra’s huge sky sunsets, or the grassy yellow of the Monaro Plains perceived in Rosalie Gascoigne’s fragments of old soft-drink crates, it is a solitary occupation. Everyone dies alone, she’s read that often, and the nurses in the chemo ward had told her how often they had observed it to be true; a mortally ill person will be surrounded by family and friends, who wish him not to be alone at this last moment, but the person waits until they are all gone to die. As Geoffrey did. We die alone, and in our most secret beings we live alone. Desire presses bodies together, plaits together minds, but what keeps sex going is the knowledge that each time you haven’t finally made it work, you haven’t merged with the other, you still have to part, and there is melancholy in that, but the rekindling of desire as well.
If she were more agile perhaps she could put her lips to her breast and kiss it.
What has happened to us is always happening. Geoffrey dies. The girl with the long plait and the small shorts puts her tray on the table, the red-haired man sits beside her. The night is dark, the rain falls, the road is long and clumsily winding, but in the car the girl and the man have so much to say, are so in love with their conversation, that they don’t care how long or dangerous the drive is. She has already fallen in love with him, now she thinks she could marry him. See them there, a man and a woman, in a little car driving through the night, forever.
And maybe . . . maybe what hasn’t happened yet, the possibilities, all those outcomes, maybe they exist too, eventually and all at once.
at concerts
WHEN CLARE READ THE FIRST few pages of her widowing story at a literary festival on the Gold Coast some people cried. She had never read anything so newly written, so unlived with. Part of a story that wasn’t finished, even. In her home town she would not have read anything so raw, but somehow distance made her reckless.
She could hear the breath-stilled quiet of the audience. Her own voice was flat, unable to bear any emotion, so the words had to work on their own. Afterwards some women came up and talked to her. One said she was a widow and Clare had got exactly how it felt. The next day at breakfast when she was talking to a publisher, it was a formal event, a conversation about writing and editing and publishing, a woman made a comment, as part of the discussions and questions afterwards. She was a pretty woman, rather plump, with soft blonde curly hair that was probably grey underneath, and her voice was gentle. She said this:
I do so miss having a man in my life. When I go to a concert and a couple come and sit next to me I always hope it will be the man who sits beside me, just so I can feel what it is like to have a man beside me again, not touching, just the feel of a man sitting beside me. But they never do, it is always the wife who sits next to me, and the man on her other side.
Clare didn’t write that down straightaway, so couldn’t swear to having got her words verbatim, but that was the tone and the rhythm and the sadness of her words. Wanting so much to sit by a man. And the sigh of the audience when she finished; they knew what she meant.
vermilion: a short story
THE FLOOR IS THE COLOUR OF honey. It’s knotty old pine gone yellow under varnish, but it looks viscous and golden, and the flawed wood has a patterned richness that once was the life of the tree. The contour lines of its knots and swirls and granular shadings are evidence of growing and branching and flourishing, now preserved and mellowing under these honeyed glazings of varnish. Smooth it is under bare feet, warm and even comfortable to the skin, not of course sticky like honey; like resin, perhaps, like amber, preserving all the knots and grains and irritations of that past but still witnessed busy life.
Except for several nails that have worked loose, and up, to catch at bare skin. Somewhere there’s a nail punch, used when these floors were new, before the varnish. Vivian remembers it, remembers the work with it, going along the rows, tapping with a hammer, not forcefully but accurately, sliding up and down with bare feet to check the job well done, and remembers where it came from, this deft tool, the solid iron nail punch over all the years a tiny weight on her conscience.
Make sure you bring it back, said Sid, Maggie’s father. She and Maggie had been best friends through school and after, and it wasn’t yet apparent that they wouldn’t be through their married lives as well. No falling out, nothing dramatic, just two husbands who weren’t drawn to one another, and living in different cities the women not quite making the effort needed. But back then, freshly married, they were still near enough the young women they had been, even visiting one another at their parents’ houses, talking about their own new houses in those other cities, when Vivian had described all the floors to varnish, and how the nails stuck up, and Sid had said, Here, this is what you need, best to do it properly in the first place, and had loaned the nail punch. Not something he used often, but something he liked to have, and was keen not to lose. Of course, Vivian said. Of course she would bring it back. But somehow she never had. And had never forgotten she hadn’t.
There was another thing she remembered about Sid, from when she was seventeen, some years before. Hot summer, and she was visiting Maggie. She can still remember the dress she was wearing, the way that certain dresses stay in your mind all your life, their colour and shape and how you felt wearing them, the nearest you will ever get to the person you were then, while others are entirely forgotten, unless in surprise you find a bit in the rag bag, or if there are careful needlewomen around, in some piece of patchwork. This dress was made of seersucker, and the crinkles of the weave formed stripes in colours of toffee brown, with white and cream; it had a fitting bodice, a waist with a belt, a full flaring skirt. The sleeves were small and the neck wide and quite low, lower in the back than the front. It was a satisfying dress, a dress with verve. Her mother had made it, and got it right for tightness of waist and lowness of neck, which didn’t always happen.
Sid came up behind her. She and Maggie were walking down the narrow hall of her house, his house, Maggie already round the corner in the dining room. You’ve got a mole, he said.
She knew she had a mole. It was quite big, the size of a pea, but flat. It was on her back, her shoulder-blade, it sat just above the graceful curve of the neck of her dress. She thought of it as a beauty spot. If she’d been a woman at another moment in history she might have put it there herself, a round brown patch glued on to draw attention to the backward dip of her dress. As it was, nature was doing it for her, and she was pleased.
Sid put out his hand and tweaked the mole. Took it between thumb and forefinger,
pinched it, turned it. Cruelly. Shockingly. Vivian’s eyes filled with tears, she went stiff and jumped out of his grasp, twisted round, saw his grinning face, and ran into the dining room after Maggie. Her face burned, and so did her back; the mole felt damaged, as though he had almost pulled it off, and for days after she could feel the rough stinging pinch of his fingers. It had taken only a moment to happen, in that darkly carpeted silent hall, but it was a moment like a cleaver chopping through her girlhood. Maybe not severing it, but damaging. Sid changed from a man known as fathers are, taken-for-granted good, strict, unfunnily joking, kind, changed into her equal and her antagonist, a mean person who had enjoyed hurting her. Whose smile was dangerous, because it belonged to a diminished person. She never felt quite the same about her mole after that, he’d spoilt its serene and saucy beauty, and after her second child was born she had it removed, in case it should turn into a melanoma.
Later still, she could think, lecherous old man. Though he was much younger than she is now. And looking through the narrow wooden box where are kept the screwdrivers and hammers and a couple of old rusty files that she’s never known used, for the nail punch that has sunk to the bottom untouched for years though it is something you like to have, her fingers pinching its round cold solid smoothness, she thinks, maybe I never gave it back to him, because of the mole.
Of course, you’ll have carpet one day, Maggie said, and she replied, Oh no, I hate carpet. Tony didn’t care for it either. That was one of the lucky things about being married, that they did it for reasons of sex (it was long enough ago for it to be difficult to have any, and certainly it seemed impossible to live together, without this ceremony, as well as pleasure in one another’s company), and then discovered that they both didn’t like carpet, and did like lots of fresh air, the windows open for breezes blowing through whenever it was at all warm. What about draughts, Maggie said, wooden floors are so draughty. No, said Vivian, all that wax, it keeps the draughts out. Wine got spilt on it, and newly nappyless children sometimes peed on it, watching with a certain pleasure the globular puddle that formed, sometimes pushing at it with their fingers to see it stretch and blob across the wood. It was easier to be brisk and cheerful and do your best not to give a child hang-ups about toilet training when the puddle was quick to mop up and did no damage. When the parents got older and had more money they bought rugs, old oriental ones, but still there was plenty of deepening yellow wood. You could hope caught-short grandchildren peed on that and not the rugs, but rugs were tough, weren’t they supposed to be cured with camel dung?
It was odd that the nails were beginning to pop up again. Vivian hunkered down. Tapping the hammer against the punch. Having to do it on her own. Saying to herself, so, so, how is it any different from going to the pictures or shopping or being in bed on your own? Don’t think of it. But of course it was its being the first time that caused the thought, the first time on her own, and the last time being so long ago, and so immense and exciting, their new house and new life . . . and she was getting sentimental about nails. No, melancholy, you could say melancholy, because there is a pleasure in remembering, it happens again if you remember. You’re a girl again, a young woman, your legs are limber and everything is easy and there’s so much time. And the young man you are intending to spend your life with is dipping a wide brush in varnish and making jokes about painting himself into corners.
The hammer bangs down. The nail punch jumps. There’s a dint in the soft honey-coloured wood. Bugger.
Hooroo, calls a voice through the screen door. I didn’t know you were a home handyman.
It’s Rennie. Rennie is a new friend. She lives in one of the townhouses on the way to the shops. One day Vivian was passing her house and music was pouring out. It was Lucia di Lammermoor, the septet. The seven voices looped and soared and plaited the familiar marvellous pattern, she had to stop and listen. She sat on a low brick wall and raised her head and stared at the pale green leaves of a silver birch trembling in the music-filled air. Love and death. Love and death.
Why don’t you come in and listen? A woman had come out into the courtyard and was gazing at her.
It’s nearly over, said Vivian.
We can play it again.
Okay, she said. Thinking it was time to do something different, even a small thing like this.
That was how she met Rennie.
Have a glass of white wine, said Rennie. I told a lie. We can’t play it again, it’s the radio.
She stood with her hands clasped, smiling a naughty anxious smile. Vivian wondered about her age; the same as her own, perhaps. She had grey hair cut short, in little curls over her pink scalp. Her shape was cylindrical, under a pink and blue striped silk dress with a loose tie where the waist ought to be. Her legs were long and slender and shapely, and she wore flat little red leather shoes.
What pretty shoes, said Vivian, admiring their softness, and the red grosgrain ribbon binding them.
Yes, aren’t they, said Rennie, I get them from the ballet shop. Very comfortable. Poor feet, they need a bit of comfort in their old age.
Rennie’s feet looked as though they might have had a lot of comfort. They were broad but not bulgy, no bunions showing through the fine soft smoothness of the red leather.
Just a minute, she said, and came back with a bottle of wine already open and two glasses.
Vivian looked at her watch. It’s ten to five, Rennie said. Definitely time.
So began the friendship. Both widows. Living in this suburb where people their age were moving out and young couples moving in and so frantically busy with jobs and children they had no neighbourly leisure. Vivian the more reticent, waiting to be asked, Rennie likely to wander in, as now, hoorooing through the wire door.
I’m not handy, said Vivian, I just can’t stand nails sticking into my feet. She explained that she walked round the house barefoot, most of the time. Liking the smooth warm glaze of the wood against her skin.
It looks like honey, said Rennie. Not sticky, of course.
Vivian made coffee and they sat in the garden. They talked about that for a while, the black speckles on the rhododendrons, the nuisance but prettiness of the forget-me-nots, the honeysuckle with its sweet childhood smell and rampaging habit.
Remember pulling the centre out and sucking it.
The honey taste.
There’s a lot of work in a garden, said Rennie. It needs a man.
Oh, said Vivian. You can say that. A gardener would do. Or me working harder.
They sipped their coffee.
Vivian, do you have any problems with . . . with . . . dryness?
Well, I water a lot . . .
Not, not gardens. Dryness, you know . . . down there.
Oh. Well, not as far as I know. I mean, it doesn’t bother me.
I mean, when you’re having sex.
But I don’t have sex. Not any more.
Rennie frowned a bit, but her mouth turned up.
You do? said Vivian.
Mm. Perry, next door. He pops in, well, several times a day.
Several . . .?
Two or three. Four sometimes.
Gawd. He’s . . .
Yes.
So. Where. What. Vivian began questions and abandoned them. Perry, she said.
Yes, he’s a nice man. A good bit younger than me, he’s only sixty-six. Of course, I don’t let on how old I am.
Sixty-six.
Mm. He’s retired now. His wife died and he moved into the townhouses. His daughters thought he’d be safer. But he still grows roses. Red ones, they smell lovely.
And he comes to visit you.
Yes, said Rennie. Her face and scalp were glowing rosy pink. But, you see. Well, it’s not so much the dryness. There’s these creams and things. But, you know . . . you know when you laugh a lot you get caught short a bit, well, that tends to happen, I don’t like that. I mean, the bed cover’s satin, it shows.
Have you, spoken to your doctor . . .
Dr Ale
x? Oh I couldn’t. He’s such a handsome young man. How could I ask him something like that? What would he think of me? Rennie gave Vivian a reproachful-flirtatious look.
I’m sure he wouldn’t care . . .
I would.
Well, what about another doctor? I go to a woman, Nicole, she’s terrific . . .
Oh, but I couldn’t give up Dr Alex. I’ve been going to him for years.
Nicole’s good with women’s things. Menopause, and that. I’m sure she’d know about incontinence.
Incontinence. It’s not as bad as that.
Three or four times. A day. It’s probably stress.
Oh, it’s not stressful.
It might be, in a localised way.
Maybe I’ll get a chenille throw, said Rennie. One of those really fluffy ones. Rose-coloured.
Rennie’s sitting room was extremely rosy. She had a sofa covered in blue linen with big pink cabbage roses, and armchairs in a deep terracotta with bunches of them. The curtains were heavy cotton striped in the same colours. There were real roses in blue and white Chinese bowls, and paintings in gilded frames. Vivian recognised it as the English country house look, and was surprised that she liked it; the entire thing was so whole-hearted you couldn’t help it.
Rose chenille, Vivian said.
A deep colour. Nothing pallid, said Rennie.
What about, the sheets, said Vivian.
Oh, we don’t get into bed, it’s not that kind of relationship.
Is that because of etiquette, or passion, Vivian asked.
Rennie ate another ginger biscuit. No wonder she was a cylindrical shape. Today her dress was green, a pale sage colour that was pretty without being sickly, tied with a bow around her fat waist. It was the kind of dress Vivian’s mother would have worn; she didn’t know you could still get them. Vivian was wearing black straight trousers and a big white tee-shirt; her waist wasn’t very thin either, no way would she tie a bow round it.
The Fog Garden Page 4