by Toni Jordan
‘This is a job offer, Philip. That’s all.’
‘Of course, love.’ He blinks. ‘But whenever you’re ready, you know where I am.’
She spent months dreaming of this moment, awake and asleep. She’s spent years, when other girls her age were thinking of travel or career or research or makeup or clothes. And it’s here. The photographs of Rachel are in her bag, over her shoulder. She still doesn’t mention them. You can never go back, she thinks.
He walks to the sliding door and opens it as if he lives here. ‘I’m going to find this Rachel. And you’re going to have a proper career. Win–win.’
She watches him go, and it’s as if the very air parts around him. His energy, his intensity. The irresistible pull of his wake.
22
New York City, 1938
This isn’t the night they kiss. That comes later. But after that night in the club, the thought of Inga fizzes inside Rachel like the bubbles in her champagne cider.
She staggers home at almost two after the finest night of her life. She’s been drinking and dancing and laughing with Inga, and Charles and yes, even the strange little man Fischer with the aw shucks Miss Karlson manner. The night progresses, and Fischer is the picked-upon younger brother, the butt of every joke. He doesn’t seem to mind. He tags along behind them. He reminds Rachel of a boy from infant school back in Pennsylvania, Ethan Fairweather, who had a harelip and would take all kinds of abuse just to be included. Samuel Fischer fetches the cigarettes and the drinks and clears them space on the dance floor when Inga insists on teaching Rachel how to do the Big Apple. The ladies need room, he tells the sodden, leaning shufflers. Miss Karlson needs some room. He’s the one who holds the table while they’re dancing and finds their shoes at the end of the night, though no one can find Charles’s keys or his scarf. Charles’ll have to wake his wife to get inside, he tells them—an inglorious end to a glorious evening.
Sam offers to walk Rachel home but Inga dismisses him and takes her home to Hell’s Kitchen herself. There’s a full moon. On the front steps of the tenement, Inga holds Rachel’s hand in both of hers and turns it over, front and back, as though she’s trying to memorise every square inch of skin. Rachel can’t find words and for a while neither can Inga.
‘I’m glad I know where you live,’ Inga says, finally. ‘Who knows how many dragons are out there?’
The next day should be an exercise in exhaustion but Rachel is alert at the restaurant, moving faster than she can recall. Who put coffee in your coffee? Mrs O’Loughlin says. Then comes Sunday, and perhaps if Rachel was another kind of girl she’d start worrying now about when she might see Inga again. But Rachel is not that kind of girl: she does not expect to see Inga again. It would be like a lottery winner expecting straight away to see their numbers come up again. A night like that is something Rachel is certain she will not experience twice.
On Sunday morning, as she is hanging out her washing on the fire escape, she looks down to the street and—who is that, leaning against the steps out the front of the building? Even from this angle—the top of an ice-blonde head—there’s no mistake. Rachel leans over the cold iron railing and calls down.
Inga steps back further onto the street so she can tilt her head back and for a moment Rachel is sure she’ll be hit by a passing car.
‘I knew you had to come out eventually,’ Inga yells up to her. ‘I need you to take me to the park. I’m completely out of burdock.’
Rachel scatters the last of the washing and dashes back through the window to grab her coat.
In the following week they see a movie, they go to a cocktail bar after work. Inga asks questions about the farm, the mill, her parents. Rachel tells her so much and no more.
‘Come over on Sunday morning,’ Inga says. ‘We’ll decide what to do when you get there.’
So here she is now, standing outside Inga’s apartment, a newish brick building in Yorkville near the Carl Schurz Park. She stands out there until the doorman peers through the glass at her. There’s something under her skin, she can feel it. She’s still unused to premeditated action. Would she have gone upstairs if the woman waiting for her was someone other than Inga? It’s moot. Inga is one of a kind: a planet, not a person. In the end, Rachel succumbs to the gravitational pull.
She knocks on the door. No answer. Does she have the time wrong, or the day? She almost leaves but for the thought of Inga waiting for her. She knocks again.
‘What now?’ Inga calls from inside.
‘It’s me. Rachel.’
‘Oh. What the hell is the time?’ The door swings open and Inga is there in a man’s dressing-gown with caramel silk pyjamas peeking out. She holds the door for Rachel to come inside.
Inga’s apartment is so unlike Rachel’s it seems absurd to use the same word. A cream and blue Chinese rug covers much of the parquetry, and the chairs—some green velvet with tortured arms and legs, others with tapestry seats and armrests and backs like soldiers—are standing stiff against the cream-papered walls. Heavy oil portraits of angry or dead-eyed women glare across the room. The far windows, framed with chintzy scalloped curtains, are sealed tight but the view she glimpses would be glorious across the East River to Roosevelt Island and maybe as far as Astoria; trees turning red and amber and gold. Rachel’s shoes click on the floor; Inga is barefoot, each nail a tiny silver shell.
‘It’s lovely,’ she says.
‘What? Oh, the apartment. Is it?’ Inga says. ‘Charles organised it. Some friend of his, in Europe, I think. Italy? The paintings are ghoulish, don’t you think? I might put them in a cupboard.’ And then, ‘Look, I know I said we’d go out but I’ve just had a thought I need to jot down. Could you wait a bit?’
Rachel sits on one of the green chairs, bag on her lap, while Inga sprawls on the floor, leaning back on a matching love seat. Around her are half-a-dozen coffee cups filled to different levels with inky liquid. There’s also paper in messy stacks: typescript covered with handwriting. Inga has a pencil in her hand and another threaded in her hair. She shuffles through the papers, attacking each one so furiously the lead makes tiny holes.
Five minutes go by. Ten. Rachel tilts her head to read a sheet of paper that’s slid across the floor close to where she’s sitting. Inga notices.
‘No you don’t!’ She snatches the paper up and places it on top of the messy pile. ‘No one reads until it’s finished. Do you want coffee? Make yourself coffee.’ Inga waves to a door behind her, not raising her eyes.
Rachel picks her way around a gleaming kitchen that might be part of a spaceship. She returns to the living room and sits back down on the green chair, sipping her coffee.
Another ten minutes. Twenty.
Then Inga throws the pencil toward the window and it bounces off the glass with an unsatisfying tink. She stands. She kicks the pile of paper at her feet and marches over to stand before her, hands on hips, and Rachel thinks she’s in trouble.
Instead Inga bends at the waist, tilts Rachel’s face up by the chin and kisses her, open-mouthed and soft.
There’s no time even for the shock of it. Later, yes. But for now Rachel is pure reaction: the inside of her throat melts. She softens and renders and becomes a liquid thing. That there is someone in the world who wants to touch her like that, to taste her. That there is a way, a possible way, to exist in this life, and that the person who shows her this is Inga Karlson, her Inga Karlson.
‘I can’t get a thing done with you around,’ says Inga, against her open mouth. ‘There’s nothing for it.’
Inga kneels in front of her and kisses the line of Rachel’s jaw, the length of her throat. She slips off her own coat and Rachel’s blouse. This is not how Rachel imagined it, if she imagined it at all. There were boys at school when they lived on the farm. Billy Amberson, who stuck out his freckled leg to trip her whenever she walked past his desk. Bradley Ellis, who never made it beyond the first reader and tried to lift her skirt once as they walked home. She remembers his hand, fat and c
lammy. The boys and men at the mill, cologne and pomade not quite covering their sweat-smell and dangerous edges, mostly steered clear of her. More than once she wondered at the difference between her and other girls, who were chased with such grim determination.
Inga is gentle. Soft and exquisite and relentless, an ecstasy that’s almost more than Rachel can stand. More than once as her hands twist and clutch at the lush oriental pile, Rachel thinks it’ll be the death of her.
Just like liquid the afternoon trickles away and Inga’s mouth and tongue and fingers bring her this way and that. That afternoon, Inga gets no more work done and Rachel does not go home.
23
Brisbane, Queensland, 1986
The next morning Caddie wakes at five with her legs twitching under the sheet and her mind darting like a mouse in a cage. She needs the open air, the dawn light, blood pumping in her veins. She dresses for work and heads east on Milton Road. The city in the distance is lit gold from behind; a corona, a halo, a blessing. It’s forty-five minutes away if she heads straight past the brewery at the top of the rise. She’s in no hurry. She turns right towards the river.
From the hill above Coro Drive the river is a murky brown and the other side is flat except for Torbreck in the distance. There are so many things to balance. She wonders what life must be like for Philip: to care for no one but yourself, to allow everyone around you to be broken in your service. If that’s what it means to be successful.
She makes it through the work day, somehow. Every time the front door opens, her heart leaps. For no good reason except it might be Jamie. It’s never Jamie.
As she and Christine are closing the shop, Caddie looks through the big front windows onto Adelaide Street. It’s like a wildebeest migration: schoolboys with shirts untucked, backs bowed by their ports, jostling on the steps of a bus; trainee beauticians in smocks, with scrubbed faces, half-jogging across the road to the square; uniformed usherettes from the Regent with green eyeshadow and lips like candy teetering on their heels.
No one lives here, no one socialises here. She’ll miss it, she realises. Being in the centre, being surrounded by books. She’ll miss Christine. And yet Caddie stands in the small back room, and she quits her job.
Christine runs her hands through her hair before thrusting them deep in her pockets. Nods. ‘If you’re expecting me to talk you out of it, you can think again.’
‘I’m not expecting anything.’
‘Unless it’s about money. Is it about money? We could talk about it, if it is.’
‘It’s not about money.’
‘Good. I don’t have any more money. Is it about bookselling? Because it’s a good job, with a future. Solid, stable work.’
‘I still love bookselling. It’s not that.’
‘Fine, go. I mean it. You’ve been here long enough. It’s a job, not a life sentence.’
‘God, Christine. Don’t get all mushy on me.’
‘Off travelling, I expect? You’ll never know where in the world you belong unless you see more than one place.’
Caddie feels like laughing. ‘I’m not going anywhere. But I do have a project. An exciting new project. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’
‘Something to do with the bloke that phoned? I can always tell.’
‘Who? Oh. No, not him,’ Caddie tells her. ‘It’s nothing to do with Jamie.’
‘A different bloke, is it? Because changing direction for a bloke, regardless of what kind of bloke…’ Christine scratches her scalp with her nails. ‘Look. It’s not really my job to tell you this kind of thing. But in lieu of. You know. Your dad. You’ve got to set your own sails. Following a man, it’s not very smart.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ Caddie says. She’s already feeling not very smart.
When Caddie gets home from work, she sees a note that Terese has left near the phone in the hall: JAMIE called! Call him back. (And tell me everything!)
She’d like to call him back. She’s itching to; she picks up the phone twice and holds it to her ear until the dial tone gives up and becomes one long beep.
She’ll finish up on Thursday. There’ll be a cake on her last day. Something nice, from Shingle Inn. All her favourite customers will say heartfelt things about books she’s recommended that they’ve loved or their children have loved. About the trouble she always went to. About how her smile cheered them up on days when they needed it. Everyone will sign a giant card. Christine will choose a special book for her and wrap it in cellophane; hardback poetry, perhaps. Last year’s A. D. Hope, or a Les Murray collection. In a week or two, no one will miss her at all.
On the Monday of her last week, she stays late to go through the invoices and ring customers with special orders, but she’s also making her plan. When she gets home it’s after nine. Pretty and Terese are out but there’s a parcel wrapped in brown paper and string on the kitchen bench. It’s addressed to her. She opens it: an old hardback edition of A Room with a View, published by Knopf in 1923. It’s lovely. There’s a note inside: I’m off to Melbourne this arvo for a week or so, for meetings and some estate auctions. (Planned for ages but slipped my mind. Clearly something is affecting my concentration.) I’ll be home next Friday. Perhaps a strategy coffee/dinner? Qan Heng’s? Or JoJo’s? Jamie.
This is good, she thinks. Really. She has enough on her mind and doesn’t need to think about coffee with Jamie, or dinner or anything else. The last thing she needs is for her mind to wander to lazy Sundays in the beer garden at the R.E. or weekends away at Broadbeach and swimming in the surf, the pull of the swell, the lift and tug of it.
None of this is helpful.
She needs time to plan, to prepare. This is good, she thinks, Jamie being away. Keep saying it, Caddie.
On her first day at her new job, Philip is overjoyed to see her and he hugs her instead of his usual double-cheek kiss.
‘First, we write to Rachel. University letterhead, the good one. Opportunity to contribute to international scholarship. Long-awaited recognition for your unique place in history. Charm offensive,’ he says.
‘And if she doesn’t respond?’
‘Unlikely. But she has to collect her mail some time, so.’ His eyes light up and he seems almost boyish. ‘Stakeout!’
She feels a strange calm. ‘What about that other Karlson expert. You mentioned her once,’ she says. ‘You weren’t tempted to get her involved?’
‘It’s a he, so you can sheathe the claws. And no: nonstarter. We were close at one point but he just didn’t have the cojones for research.’
Why’s that, she asks.
He rolls his eyes. ‘What you have there is a textbook case of overprivilege. Someone who doesn’t appreciate opportunities. I called in favours to get him a post-doc, a really great post-doc actually, because he was one of us, and then he just threw it all in. Went off to bum around Europe. Now he’s running the family business. Disappointed everyone. Not hungry enough, that was the trouble.’
She feels a creeping on her skin. ‘You mean, not capable of hunting down a little old lady.’
He leans across the desk, chin resting on his knitted fingers. ‘Caddie. There is no higher calling than knowledge. It’s what humanity is. We owe it to the future to uncover the truth and we shouldn’t be letting self-indulgent sentimentality stand in our way. Besides, I went out on a limb for that man. I even tried to talk him into coming jogging with me, because he frankly could’ve done with the exercise.’ Philip puffs out his cheeks then releases the air in a whoosh. ‘Like talking to a doughnut.’
‘And he runs the family business?’ she says.
‘I don’t know, his parents got sick or something. Some kind of cancer? Both of them, which was unlucky. Book nerd. You know the type.’
‘I do,’ Caddie says.
‘A bit of a dork. He’s uncool, frankly.’
Uncool.
Oh. This is who she’s siding with. This is the alliance she’s chosen. A deal with the devil, to deliver Rachel into Philip’s h
ands. She thinks back to that vulnerable old woman in the photographs. It’s her fault that Rachel is in Philip’s cross-hairs.
‘If I hadn’t come to see you,’ she says, ‘would you have found me?’
His strong, clean profile. Poetry in skin and bone.
‘Sure, of course. Eventually.’ He itches one side of his nose. ‘A little shove from a lovely girl, that’s what we all need. And you waited for me, I appreciate that. We make a good team, Caddie. And look, if you’re genuinely concerned about the old woman, better to be inside the tent.’
‘I feel responsible,’ she says. She wishes she could warn Rachel somehow. Stand beside her and take her by the elbow and say Someone’s onto you.
‘Exactly. You can soften the blow. Look after her interests.’ Philip looks at his watch. ‘Shit, is that the time? I’ve got Chaucer at ten and I can’t miss another one.’
Those corded wrists. There’s no fat on him anywhere, not an inch. It’s the kind of thin that comes from unwavering discipline and exercise. Part of her understands that these are admirable qualities.
24
New York City, 1938
When Rachel first moved to the city, she was too dazed and hungry to feel its troubled beat. The aftershocks of the Great War, the seismic tremors of financial collapse; the whole arrhythmic mess juddering against the distant rumbles of European calamity. Now she can feel the nervous energy in the streets, though; the bubbling and jumping at shadows. The Munich agreement at the end of September brings a city-wide exhalation, it seems. To everyone except Inga. She obsesses over the state of the world, reads as many newspapers as she can. Rants, periodically, about what she sees there.